


The Machiavelli Factor

by Lillian_Shepherd



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 53,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillian_Shepherd/pseuds/Lillian_Shepherd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake knew he had a reputation, but even he did not know how far it extended until the day he was snatched by alien technology from the cell in which he was awaiting Federation injustice.</p><p>The crew of the <i>Liberator</i> were trapped by Servalan on the savage planet of Terminal, but unexpected rescue catapulted them into an even more desperate situation, with no way of telling friend from foe in an alien galaxy.</p><p>Note:  Owing to a missing section in the text version I am using, the next chapter will be subject to some delay, until I type it up!  It is missing from the current online version in the Hermit.org library, but no one seems to have noticed. Least of all me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first published by Green Dragon Press in 1982, then republished by Waverley Press in 2005. It has been available on Hermit.org but that site will be gone soon.
> 
> In series chronology this story will pick up the marooned _Liberator_ crew on Terminal after the end of the third season. Fourth season will not take place in this universe.
> 
> Some of the story is in third person, some in first person.
> 
> Major character death is in Chapter 3. If you need to know who this is, the name is in the end note.

"Blake, do you hear me? We've sent for Servalan. You will be the ransom for our planet's peace." 

I had once heard that voice as a dim rumble in the rolling thunder of my pain. There was a time when I might have thought it important, but by then I did not care. It had seemed to me that there might have been other voices, other words that I would rather have heard, but I had pushed away that thought, submerging myself in the pain. I had chosen to be here, alone, and that was worse than any physical agony. 

"He can't hear you." 

I had heard. It simply had not mattered. 

The voice had gone away then, leaving me alone on a hard stone shelf in a damp cell. 

Then the silver-blue glow had claimed me - and pain, more pain than I had ever imagined existed... ... the pain is there now... the blue-silver glow engulfs me. Am I still in that cell? The pain rages, beating me with silver staves. That cell? A year ago? A decade? A few seconds? Now? 

I'm sorry, I tell all the people I know will never hear me. I should have known that one man cannot stem the tide of history or even turn it. The Federation dies: the scramble for power begins. How could I have ever hoped for anything else? You were right, Avon. I can never tell you that now... or have I already told you? 

Never felt pain like this... and yet I can think, floating detached from torment. My body hurts, but does it still exist? How is it that I still live? There is a strange sense of the past repeating... repeating... repeating... 

I have been here before, in the blue-silver agony, yet I could not have been. This is the first/only time, the one/only place in now/always. 

Dying? Is this what it feels like to die in silver-blue fire? 

Forgive me, my friends. Forgive me for destroying/saving/destroying your lives... Forgive me. 

Oh Lord, I did not think that it could hurt so much... 

The universe tears itself apart, tearing me with it.

 

Coalescence.

 

"Welcome, Roj Blake." The voice was not human. It was high and musical, yet with a harsh note in it, a voice never meant to form human words. 

But the pain was gone. I felt weak but well, well as I had not been since Star One. I was warm and the hard slab under me had been miraculously transformed into a soft bed. 

I opened my eyes. 

The being standing outlined against the warm cream walls was not human. It was tall and it bent in all the wrong places, its turquoise skin iridescent and full of tiny facets, and above its golden eyes swayed a tall, pale, fragile crest. Yet it was humanoid enough to be reassuring, clothed in a simple tunic that bore a symbol that I knew: a staff twined about with serpents, a caduceus - the human symbol for a healer. 

I turned my head. The wall was a curve of window and beyond it lay a garden of cool stone and dark plants and falling water, leading to an ocean beach. Despite the second alien who stood regarding me, shadowed against the dark blue sky, it also was familiar and reassuring. The sky itself was not, for in it hung the ghostly shapes of moons, worlds, hundreds of them, crowding the sun. I knew at once that I was nowhere in the Known Worlds, for a sky like that would have been renowned throughout the galaxy. 

The second alien spoke. "Do you feel well?" 

I sat up. There was still no pain. I was naked and unscarred. Even the ragged red tear above the elbow that I had borne from childhood had vanished. 

"Well? I seem to be completely well," I replied. "I think, I must thank you... whoever you are." 

"I am Silkay and, when you know all, you may not be so grateful. Yet I repeat, 'Welcome, Roj Blake', for we have great need of your help." 

"My help?" I smiled wryly. My help had been no help at all to everyone who had trusted me. Even so, I knew that I would try to give whatever help Silkay wanted. I needed to have a purpose again, something to drive my loss from my mind. 

I said, "You'd better tell me about it."


	2. Before the Dawn

A red line flashed across the top of the computer screen, interrupting my useless contemplation of the meagre information that the Scitech computers would provide on the Yard Barriers. I touched the comspek button and addressed the central computer. "What is it?" I asked. 

"Routine scanning of Main Galaxy communications traffic has located messages containing keywords 'Blake', 'Avon' and ' _Liberator_. This information is conveyed in accordance with your standing instructions." 

"Decode and display." 

As the words appeared on the screen I felt as if I had swallowed a litre of ice-water. 

"How long ago was that last message transmitted?" I demanded. 

"Four standard hours." 

I told the computer exactly what I thought of that information. 

"That instruction is physically impossible." 

"Is the Scoop in operation?" 

"No." 

"Is it ready for operation?" 

"Power build-up is almost complete. The Scoop will be ready for operation in approximately four hours." 

"Compute Scoop co-ordinate equivalents of those given for teleport in the message numbered S643/UR1041/5 and pass them to Jake Harun at Scoop Control. Tell him to stand by for a major pickup." 

"Co-ordinates computed and transmitted." 

"And is the Director free?" I asked. 

There was short pause. Then, "The Director is free. She will accept your image-contact." 

"No. This is too important. I must see her face to face. Now." 

Again I sweated out the silence. 

"The Director will see you in five minutes," 

As I jumped to my feet, the computer added, "Jake Harun wishes to speak with you-" 

"Tell him... tell him he'll find out soon enough-" I dived out of the door before the computer could reply.

 

"We've tried to scoop _Liberator_ before, Ricel," the Director said, lacing her pudgy fingers. "For some reason, its hull is resistant to the E-space projection field." 

"I know that. I also know that we need _Liberator_ technology. Correct? Ship design. Teleport. Force field. Computer. All of them would complement and help explain what we already have." 

"Yes, yes. Come to the point." 

"The point is that, while we can't scoop the ship, we may now have a chance to scoop its crew." 

"Who may or may not be able to tell us anything we want to know." 

"Kerr Avon certainly will." 

The Director considered. "Kerr Avon..." 

"And I need him. The key to the Yard Barriers may well be in the computers here at Scitech Central. They are still pretty much of a mystery to our scientists-" 

"Can we pick up Avon?" she interrupted. 

"Yes. Look at those messages, Director." I pointed towards the computer screen. "You know and I know that Roj Blake is dead, but that information came to us from a Federation atmospheric tight-beam signal which _Liberator_ couldn't have picked up. This message purports to come from Blake. Someone is laying a trap." 

"And Avon has fallen into it. I don't like the look of this last message, the one telling Vila Restal to take the _Liberator_ away. Why, Van? Why did Avon fall into the trap?" 

That was the question that I had been asking myself for the last fifteen minutes. "I'm no psychologist. On the other hand, the Federation has its psychostrategists - puppeteers, they call them - and I think that those messages have been tailored by one of them to lure Avon into the trap. The discovery 'Blake' is supposed to have made must be part of it. If that message does come from the Federation we may never have another chance to pick up Avon. Of course, we may get some of the information we want through Federation inter-computer communications traffic but if Avon is killed we lose the opportunity to recruit a unique and brilliant mind: one that can tell us all we want to know about _Liberator_." 

The Director's tight grey curls bounced absurdly as she shook her head. "Van, we can't scoop at all if there is any chance of giving away our existence and disrupting the situation in the Main Galaxy." 

"Director, those co-ordinates do not correspond with any known Federation planet or installation. I don't know what's there but it can't be very big. We can go in with a wide scoop and minimal risk. Avon is important enough for us to take it. Also, do you want to risk the Federation gaining access to _Liberator_ technology? They haven't abandoned their project to construct an intergalactic drive." 

She was still hesitating. "We'll be leaving a lot of bodies behind." 

"Accidents will happen. Let the Federation try and puzzle it out." Even as I spoke, I moved a hand towards my hidden gun. If she refused my request I would have to kill her. This would ruin my cover identity and all the plans that Silkay, Stali and I had so carefully constructed but my first loyalty must lie with Avon. Perhaps he could escape from the trap, perhaps he already had, perhaps he was already dead but, quite simply, I could not take the risk. His life and those of his companions meant far too much to me to let the chance to save them slip by. 

The Director nodded, "Very well. Scoop at those co-ordinates and see what you bring in. And Van... for your own sake, what you bring in had better include Kerr Avon."

 

The floater platform took me high into a receiving area huge enough to accommodate the biggest spaceship, or even an asteroid. In fact, it had accommodated both. Now it was empty except for the AG generators suspended by their own power at the angles of the chamber, which would hold whatever we scooped intact and well away from the walls. 

The floater drifted downwards towards the balcony that housed Scoop Control. Behind it, the E-space generator screens rose upwards for fully thirty metres, glowing faintly with a blue-silver light that deepened even as I watched. The incredible power needed to penetrate E-space was already building. 

The balcony was swarming with people, both human and wi'h, though they weren't all needed to operate the Scoop. That ancient, alien-built equipment could be controlled by a single person, functioning as it had been designed to function. Even after five hundred years of research it had proved impossible to duplicate the Scoop, though the basic principles were clear. 

The back-up teams, though, were far from superfluous. Any living entity re-created by the Scoop needed attention within minutes, if it was not to die from transfer shock. 

Jake Harun stood waiting for me as the floater came to rest. Short, stocky, with red curls and snapping blue eyes, he looked twice his size by sheer power of personality as he placed his fists on his hips and regarded me with his chin and lower lip jutting forward. "Okay, Van, this had better be good. The Scoop isn't your private toy..." 

"No, it's yours," I told him, grinning in response. I liked Jake. 

"I'm just the Chief Technician here, that's all. I'm just the one who's supposed to co-ordinate this mess without even knowing what I'm supposed to be co-ordinating, that's all. I'm just-" 

"Jake, please, we don't have time. This may be our last chance." 

"Our last chance for what?" Jake howled. I think it was sheer willpower that kept him from dancing up and down on the spot. 

"To get our hands on _Liberator_ technology. Specifically, on Kerr Avon. When will we be ready to scoop?" 

When Jake had stopped opening and closing his mouth, he found an answer. "Two... two and a half standard hours." 

It was a reply that dismayed me. "Too long. _Liberator's_ crew are in a Federation trap. It may already be too late." 

"You can't shorten Scoop recharge time simply by wishing," Jake retorted. "Of course, if you could narrow the co-ordinates..." 

"No. We have only one chance and that's slim enough as it is. We have to cover as wide an area as possible." 

"Then we may pick up a very large chunk of something. No idea what, I suppose?" 

"None. It could be a ship, an asteroid or a satellite. There isn't supposed to be anything there at all... and by the time you're ready, there may not be." 

"Two hours," Jake said, implacably. "I can't change the way Builders' technology works, even for you, Van." 

 

Cally made her way through the dimness of the cruiser's main corridor, stumbling over an area of metal floor that had buckled upwards in the crash. Edging into the chaos of the engine room, she spoke to the two dark shadows crouching over the glow of a hand lamp. "There is nothing you can do until dawn when we can start recharging the solar batteries. I think you had better come outside. I have prepared a meal from the ship's concentrates." 

The taller and thinner of the two shadows turned towards her, though he could see even less of her than she could of him. "We should be rationing those. This thing may never be spaceworthy again." 

"In which case, Tarrant, we must start living off the land as soon as possible," Cally retorted. "Dayna and I will hunt in the morning. Now we must eat and sleep." 

"Got it all worked out, haven't you, Cally?" Tarrant muttered loudly. 

She ignored him. "Avon?" 

"Yes. Perhaps you are right." Avon straightened, swaying slightly. Cally watched him anxiously as she moved aside to let him pass but he seemed steady enough as he made his way towards the yellow glint of fire beyond the open hatch. 

Tarrant hadn't moved. 

Cally decided to try just one more time. "You can't see anything in here until we fix the power, Tarrant. What are you trying to prove? That you are more stubborn than Avon or more stupid? 

There was a pause, then Tarrant snapped: "What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Whatever you want it to mean," said Cally, and was gone, back out into the twilight. 

Tarrant scowled as he followed her. Damn it, he didn't have to prove anything. Avon had led them into this trap and had lost _Liberator_ in the process. Surely there could no longer be doubt in anyone's mind as to who was the right person to lead them? Avon would just have to accept that. 

 

Tarrant emerged into a noisy Terminal evening. The afterglow of the sunset was beginning to fade into the darkening sky. Cold air with a hint of rain in it slapped him fully awake. 

The others were sitting about a small fire, except for Dayna, who was standing looking outwards towards the scrub-covered slopes, plainly on guard. 

Tarrant inclined his head towards her and asked, "Expecting visitors?" as he took the small bowl and spoon that Cally offered him. 

Dayna did not look round. "The creatures Servalan spoke of may attack." 

"Our future descendants," said Cally, with a tiny shudder. 

"Not yours," said Vila. "It must be a comfort, not to be human." 

"It all hardly seems worthwhile, somehow, if the human race is going to end up like the things Cally and I saw," Tarrant commented. 

Avon, who had been staring blankly into the fire, roused himself at this. "Unlikely." 

"Servalan said that they were what mankind will become," Tarrant pointed out. 

"Servalan is... wasn't a scientist. Her ignorance of the forces of evolution is obviously as profound as yours. Those creatures are what mankind might become if all of the human race was isolated on Terminal. In any other environment... who knows?" Despite the opportunity to lecture, Avon sounded disinterested. He lapsed into silence again, the meal in his hands untouched. 

Vila and Cally looked at each other, then at Avon, then back at each other. 

"I'm going to get some sleep," Vila announced loudly. "Coming, anyone?" He stared hard at Avon, willing him to get up, but Avon's chin just dropped even further towards his chest. 

It was Tarrant who reacted to Vila's words. "Wait a minute, Vila," he said sharply. "We've still got to arrange the watches." 

"We will be safe inside the ship if we lock the hatches," said Cally. 

"I still want a watch set." 

"Then watch." Cally glanced across at Avon but, though his eyes were still open, he did not seem to have heard. 

Tarrant glared at Cally. "Very well. I'll take first watch. You can follow me, then Avon, then Vila and finally Dayna." 

"But-" Cally began, ready to argue, when Vila got in first: 

"I saw something." He jumped to his feet, staring out into the darkness in a pantomime of surprise and fear. "They must be sneaking up on us." 

"What?" Tarrant, also on his feet, shook Vila's arm. "Where? What did you see?" 

"Eyes. Over there. Look! There they are again." 

"I can't see anything." 

"There!" Vila made a dramatic gesture with his free arm, pointing into the darkness. 

Tarrant freed Vila and snatched up a brand from the fire. "We'll take a look. Come on, Vila." 

Surprisingly, Vila did not protest. As he copied Tarrant's action in taking a piece of burning wood from the fire, he looked at Cally, winked, and jerked his head at Avon. 

Cally looked startled, then smiled and nodded. 

When all she could see of Vila and Tarrant was the red flicker of their improvised torches, Cally crossed to kneel beside Avon. She said, gently, "Come on, into the ship, before you go to sleep right here." 

He raised his head very slowly and blinked at her. "Does... it... matter?" 

"You will feel better in the morning. Come on, Avon. You don't want me to have to ask Tarrant to carry you, do you?" 

Avon gave her a dark look. He tried to get to his feet, but had to catch hold of her shoulder to stop himself from falling. When she put her arm around his waist, he did not protest, just leaned heavily against her. 

Dayna appeared out of the dark. Her black skin, lined in red by the firelight, made her seem like a warrior from the far past, but her expression was concerned. "Avon?" 

"He is all right. All that has happened is that his body is finally reacting to the demands he has made on it during the last few days." 

"Do you need help?" 

"No, thank you. I can manage. You'd better wait here for Vila and Tarrant." 

In the dim glow of the emergency permalights, Cally supported Avon into the ship. She steered him into the nearest cabin and settled him onto the bunk, helping him take off his jacket and boots. It was as she was covering him with a thermoblanket that he opened his eyes and looked up at her, his pupils huge and unfocused. 

"Cally?" he whispered 

"Yes. I am here." 

"He's dead, Cally. Blake's dead." 

"Yes, Avon, I know." 

"He's dead... and I'm free of him. Free forever." 

"Yes, you are free. Go to sleep." 

"We... we've... done... perfectly well with... without him." 

"Shhhh. Go to sleep, now." 

"Perfectly well," Avon insisted. 

"Yes. Of course we have." 

He looked at her with wide, unfocused eyes. "Then why... why...?" 

"Why does it hurt?" Cally sat on the edge of the bunk and gently stroked Avon's cheek with the backs of her fingers. "If they cut off a hand or a leg you would expect it to hurt, wouldn't you, Avon? We were all part of each other: you and I and Blake and Vila and Jenna and Gan. We've lost another part of ourselves today, perhaps the most important part." 

"I wanted to find him..." Avon whispered. "Tell him..." His voice faded away. His eyes, still fixed on Cally's face, closed slowly. 

 

Cally was still sitting looking down at Avon's face when, a few minutes later, Vila's head poked into the room. 

"Cally?" he asked softly. 

She started rather guiltily then, recovering, smiled. "It's all right. I think it would take an earthquake to wake him." 

Vila came into the room and stood beside Cally, who had risen to her feet. 

"Did you find anything out there?" she asked. 

"No. Isn't that odd?" Vila was grinning. 

"Very. Thank you, Vila." 

Vila shuffled his feet and avoided meeting her eyes. "Didn't do anything. Er... look, Cally, wake me when it's Avon's watch, will you. I wouldn't trust him to watch a stripper in this state." 

"Stripper? No, never mind, Vila. I will stand half of Avon's watch. I did not intend to wake him, anyway. He will be ill, if he pushes himself any harder. As it is, he came close to collapse from lack of sleep and shock." 

"Not to mention being manhandled by Servalan's minions. Well, at least we're rid of her. If it wasn't for the news about Blake, it might almost be worth - oh, damn." Abruptly, Vila spun round and fled the cabin. 

Cally looked down at Avon, thinking: _I will also weep for Blake tonight. I wish that you could, Avon, for I think that you miss him most._ She sighed. _You might have left us hope, Servalan. Well, we are revenged, at least. We are revenged._

 

Servalan lay in the bracken and stared down at the red glow that marked the dying fire. The President of the Terran Federation, Ruler of the High Council, Lord of the Inner and Outer Worlds, High Admiral of the Galactic Fleet, Lord General of the Six Armies and the Defender of the Earth was somewhat uncomfortable. She detested the musty smell of bracken and the dampness soaking into her clothes, making her even colder than she already was, but she knew that her present position was a necessary one. That fact did not improve her temper. Someone was going to have to pay. 

She squinted along the paragun at the figure she could see dimly, sitting in the hatch of the wrecked cruiser, silhouetted against the feeble light from within. 

_Tarrant,_ she thought. _I can kill him now. A difficult shot, but not impossible._

It was a strong temptation, but she resisted it. Tarrant was a pilot. She would need a pilot. 

The cruiser. She had thought it wrecked beyond repair, had flung it to Avon because of the amusement it gave her to think of him trying to piece it back together, but now it was her only hope. She should never have sabotaged the equipment at the Terminal base. Then, her only thought had been to make sure that Avon could not use it. She had not imagined that she might need it herself. It was pity she had been unable to return in time to disarm the demolition devices. She had miscalculated... it was to be hoped that she had also miscalculated the ability of Blake's people to repair the ship. Certainly, she could not repair it herself. 

Blake. Servalan smiled to herself. Dead, he had served her well. She remembered Avon's expression as she had told him how he had been fooled. That had been satisfying at the time but, again, it had been a mistake, though one that she could not have foreseen. Now she would have to deal with him, this man whom she had duped, humiliated and hurt. He would certainly not forgive her. 

The others too: the child Dayna, who had sworn vengeance for the killing - correction, execution - of her father. This time it was unlikely that Avon would restrain her. Cally. Cally had been Blake's loyal follower. She might also be ready to kill. Vila. She could dismiss Vila. He was a fool and a coward, though there was that nagging doubt: how had they arranged for _Liberator_ to disintegrate under her? No, that could not have been Vila... Tarrant. Ahhh... Tarrant, she understood. She had bent so many like him to her will. And it was Tarrant who would lead the group now that Avon had shown himself fallible. It was Tarrant she must convince, must work through to dominate the others. That would not be too difficult. 

She picked herself up, fastidiously brushed away the dead leaves clinging to her skirt, and began the circle that would allow her to reach the ship from the far side of the valley. The airlock would open to her handprint. She would kill Dayna - the child was a psychopathic murderer, unnecessary for repairing the ship - then surprise Tarrant to make her offer. By the time the others awoke, she would be in control. 

As she slid down the muddy slope, the prickly undergrowth caught at her dress. She tore it free with a snarl, only to hit her head on a low branch. 

Servalan sat down heavily in the mud, snarling a word that would have brought a reprimand if uttered by one of her troopers. As she wiped the trickle of blood from her eyes, she wondered if she should not, after all, wait for light... 

...but there was light. A hazy blue glow was building towards brightness in the west. She tried to remember what lay in that direction. The shaft by which Avon had entered the Terminal base was to the north-west... Wait. The glow was forming close to the position where he had first landed on the planet. 

That was not half so important as the fact that it was growing; the brightness was increasing, the area it covered widening even as she watched. 

It was blue and silver and in it swirled another colour, deeper than both, that Servalan could not name, that she seemed to see not with her eyes but deep within her mind. The night noises were stilled, but the very air was humming with power, sending eddies of dizziness into whirlpools behind her eyes. 

Memory stirred. As she had stood outside Blake's cell, ready to take him prisoner, there had been the faintest touch of such a sensation - and when she had entered the cell, Blake had been dead. 

Dead... and something of this feeling had lingered in the room... 

Servalan clawed her way to her feet and scrambled back up the slope, away from the strange, glowing hemisphere that lit every rock, every tree about her with azure light. She was panting as she ran, panic lending her speed. 

At the top of the slope she glanced back. 

The glowing area had stabilised. The blue-silver mist had formed an opaque barrier perhaps thirty metres behind her. It was no longer moving, though its radiance was reflected in the sky from horizon to horizon. 

Servalan gasped, unable to look away, her mind retreating from the impact of the unbelievable depth and colour in the pulsing misty fire that domed over an area ten kilometres in diameter, submerging the wrecked cruiser as it had submerged the Terminal base. The brightness blinded her, yet she could still see every molecule with a super-vivid clarity. 

No human mind could stand that sight. Servalan, her sanity ripping into shreds about her, screamed and fell to the ground, wrapping her arms above her head, her face buried in the cold embrace of the wet earth. 

The universe burst, shredded, compacted, vanished. 

Then there was nothing but silence. Servalan lay still. 

After a while, an owl hooted. Some creature barked, and another of the same species answered. 

Finally, Servalan found the courage to raise her head. Around her was nothing but night, no light except the scatter of distant stars. Not even the glow of the fire outside the wrecked ship penetrated the gloom. She decided to go no further that night. Nothing would persuade her to go down into that valley again until she could see what it held. She would formulate a new plan in the morning. It was plain that Terminal held threats none of them had suspected. If she could convince Tarrant that she knew more about those threats than he did, he might well be glad to make an alliance with her. 

It was with that thought drifting in her mind that she succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep on the wet grass. 

 

Even the normal space-time end of an E-space tube is a sanity-destroying experience. The human mind cannot accept a place where mass and space do not exist and entropy flows sideways. Men have been destroyed trying to encompass that strangeness. It is said that only the truly sane can emerge unscathed, but sometimes I think it is those with a touch of madness who face it best. 

Perhaps those beings we call the Builders, who created the Scoop and the world on which it stands, among other things, could look into the tube as it functioned. The wi'h can... but then they were designed to do so. It was they who were operating the instruments as the signals came back instantaneously from the Milky Way Galaxy. In a single milli-nanosecond, more power than that generated by a star would be employed to recreate the matter scanned on the other side of the E-space interface and replace the energy the Scoop had torn from the original within it. 

Once that process was in operation nothing could halt it. It was computer controlled, but the operators had to confirm that the receiving chamber was a total vacuum, that the scooped object would be held firmly in position by the AG beams and that any hostile force or weapons it contained were nullified. Those nullifiers could absorb and muffle a positron explosion. 

The Scoop would normally be used to bring through a spaceship. If the co-ordinates were precise enough it could retrieve a single man, as the wi'h had retrieved me. This time, I expected a starship or a space station, and a large lump of pure vacuum. 

What I got was a piece of planet. 

It came close to filling the vast chamber and, as the blue-silver field flare died away, we saw that it was, from our viewpoint, floating on its side, the planet surface facing towards us so we looked out onto green moorland and bushy treetops. We had taken a hunk of atmosphere too, so the great sphere we had cut from the next galaxy seemed hemispherical. 

"Life forms?" I heard Jake ask. 

"You can see the plant life. Lots of animal life, mostly small and unidentified. Humanoids... about fifty to sixty of them... concentrated on co-ordinates 542/314/820. Could be human." 

"Send the teams in, Jake," I ordered urgently. "No. Wait." I had seen a gleam of metal as I scanned the planetary surface through the magnifying viewers. Now I brought it closer. "There's a spaceship at co-ordinates 542/303/820." 

"Got it," Jake grunted. "That can't be _Liberator_." 

It wasn't. It had been a Federation cruiser. Now it was scrap metal. 

"Send the recovery teams to the ship first," I decided. 

"They're away," Jake reported. 

Those teams had been waiting outside the chamber since before materialisation began. Now their aircars sped towards the planet's surface. They had to act swiftly. The shock of what was, after all, a sort of death – and, from personal experience I knew it to be a painful death – was so great that ninety-five percent of human transferees died if not put on life support within fifteen minutes of transfer. 

I headed back to the floater and was not surprised to find Jake beside me as I jumped onto the platform. "Co-ordinates 542/303/820," he said. 

"Yes." 

The floater rose up and began a long, swinging sweep towards the planet, slowly twisting through ninety degrees so that we came in with the planetary segment under our feet. 

As the floater settled to the ground in the valley bottom we saw that the recovery teams had arrived before us. One of their aircars was parked beside the wrecked cruiser. 

There was a fire burning in front of the spaceship's open hatch. That, at least, indicated that the Scoop was functioning perfectly. I could only hope that it had transferred life energy as efficiently as it had transferred that of combustion. 

Two wi'h medical technicians were at the hatchway, placing a limp body in a life-support pod. I started forwards but Jake grabbed my arm. "What the hell's that?" 

'That' was a humanoid creature sprawling out from the bushes. It had a simian face and thick black fur. A human medic was peering down at it. He stirred it with his foot, then looked at us. "This place is crawling with these things. Bio'd love 'em. You want 'em saved?" 

"The humans first!" I said sharply. 

The medic shrugged. "They're in the ship." 

"Take as many of the aliens as you have space for to Bio," Jake ordered, as I resumed my rush towards to wrecked cruiser. At last able to look down into the pod, I realised with disappointment that I had never met the man it contained. He was human; lean, tall, dark haired, young... but he was not one of the people I wanted to see. I hoped that the anxiety I was feeling was not showing on my face, though if it was there was a good chance it would be interpreted as worry over what the Director would do to me if I failed. 

I dived into the hatch, almost hitting another life-support pod coming out. The identity of the man inside was both a relief and a shock. Vila. He was unconscious and, for the first time, it occurred to me how lucky I was that shock knocked out all transferees for many hours. It would not have been wise to have anyone recognise me in front of Jake - or anyone else, for that matter. 

There were three more pods exiting after Vila's. I stood aside so I could peer down into them as they passed. 

Cally. I had forgotten that she was beautiful. What I remembered most were her understanding, her support, and the gentleness of her voice. 

Then another woman, one I did not know. Black, good looking, very young. Too young, really, to be in such company. 

Then Avon. He was even paler than the others and I was suddenly afraid for him. Scoop transfer repaired physical injury in a way no-one understood, but the psychic shock could be terrible. 

"That one doesn't seem to have taken to transfer too well," the supervising human medic commented to me as the pod bearing Avon disappeared through the hatch. "Lucky for him that you spotted this ship. He should be all right now." 

"He'd better be," I replied. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, he's the man we arranged all this to catch." 

"Well, you caught him," said Jake, arriving at that moment. "The next question is: what are we goin' to do with this 'ere hunk of planet?" 

"Nothing until we find out what it is," I replied. "There might be anything here." 

There certainly was something. In a corner of one of the cabins I found a carrying box that contained a glowing cube. Before Jake could catch up with me, I removed the activation key. Orac would recognise me as readily as Avon, Cally or Vila. I locked the case and left it where it lay. I would requisition it later. 

The discovery of Orac was the final proof that my gamble had worked. If there had been a trap, the prey had now been removed from the snare. That thought gave me a lot of satisfaction, for I had a good idea as to who the trapper might be.


	3. Link

The morning light on her eyelids awakened Servalan. Sitting up, she looked with distaste at her ripped and muddied dress. She was hungry and stiff and cold and in no mood for sweet reason. Someone would have to pay. 

Holding firmly on to her gun, she looked down into the valley. 

Everything seemed peaceful. In the grey light she could see the cruiser lying amid the trees exactly as it had lain the night before. The hatch was still open, and Tarrant was still slumped in it, as if he had gone to sleep there, or... 

Suddenly making up her mind, she started down the slope. 

There was no sound in the valley except for the low moan of the wind and her own crashing progress through the vegetation. The air was very cold, oddly so in this relatively sheltered valley. 

Far away, a few birds dotted the sky, but there were none here. The insects that had troubled her the evening before were gone too. 

The small hairs on the back of her neck began to bristle and she clutched her gun more tightly in suddenly sweaty hands. There was something wrong with this place, wrong about the silence and stillness, wrong about the vegetation. 

She didn't puzzle it out until, in a small clearing, she came across an expanse of fallen yellow petals. A few metres away, two small saplings lay flat, cracked off at the base. Now she realised that all the leaves on the trees were beginning to brown at the edges, like paper at the edge of a fire. When she pulled at a branch hanging near her head, it broke away in her hand. The grass beneath her feet was yellowed and its flattened blades did not rise when she lifted her foot. 

Unnatural. Or perhaps far too natural. 

She considered going back, but did not really have a choice. Her only hope of leaving Terminal lay with that wrecked cruiser. 

She moved on. 

Her foot knocked a dead bird and she jumped back. Fastidiously, she pushed it with the barrel of her gun. Its curved bill and huge eyes indicated a night hunter, and every bone in its body was broken. As if it had plummeted from a great height? 

Very cautiously, Servalan advanced. 

There was a stream in the valley bottom. An animal, a water-dweller from its webbed feet, lay glassy-eyed and limp, caught in an eddy near the bank. Servalan looked hard at it, but left it where it floated as she pulled up her skirt and waded through the icy water. Normally, she would have sought some other way to cross but a mixture of apprehension and curiosity made her ignore the physical discomfort. 

She was quite close to the ship when she saw her first link, a huddle of black fur, as dead as everything else. 

As she strolled up to the ship, she knew she had nothing to fear from the man slumped in the hatchway, though it was possible that those inside had been protected from the blue light - and whatever it signified. The fire was dead but there was unburned wood in the ashes. Tarrant was dead too. Servalan touched his throat to make sure, and found the skin icy. She pushed him to one side with her gun and stepped up into the hatch, only to pause in surprise on the rim; the interior of the ship was totally dark. The power lines had been severed in the crash but the emergency permalights should have been in operation, independent of the main or emergency power sources and guaranteed to keep glowing for five centuries. Though these had been installed less than a year ago, now they were dark, without even a glow-worm flicker. 

Servalan unhooked the pocket-light from the side of the paragun she had taken from the Terminal base. That, at least, was working. 

A woman lay on the floor outside the first cabin. Cally. As dead and cold as Tarrant had been. Servalan smiled. 

Inside the room, there was a body on the bed. Servalan turned the light on its face. 

Avon. 

So now she had nothing to fear from him. As she looked at his bloodless face she felt a slight pang of regret, remembering the taste of his mouth on hers. He had really been a most attractive man. A pity that they had had no chance to take things further. She would have enjoyed him... and then enjoyed destroying him. 

Well, that was impossible now. 

It did not take her long to find Dayna and Vila. The latter had not even made it to his bed. 

Triumph filled her. They were dead now. Blake's people. These troublemakers who had caused her so many problems. They were dead and she was alive. 

Her laughter was euphoric. 

The next place that she explored was the flight deck and the first thing she noticed as she came through the door was the absence of light. All the instruments were dead. All of them. Every permanent source of energy was gone. 

Thoughtfully, she retraced her steps into the daylight, a numbness inside her. The cruiser was useless. Even if she could still have called on the expertise of Liberator's crew, they could have done nothing in the face of such a complete power shutdown. What had struck here in the night had drained away every erg of energy above molecular level. It had also struck the area of the Terminal base. She had nothing now but what she held in her hands. 

There was a snarl from behind her. She whirled, into the hurtling body of a link as it came leaping for her throat. Even as she tried desperately to raise her gun, the creature struck. 

Servalan screamed and went on screaming. Finally, the noise died to a whimper and then it ceased. After that there was no sound except the satisfied grunting of the links and the crunch of teeth on bone. 

 

Tarrant drifted slowly towards consciousness. For a while he lay still, not bothering to open his eyes, savouring the comfort of his bunk on board the _Liberator._

Wait... no, _Liberator_ was lost. Terminal... they had been stranded on Terminal. He had been... standing watch... then there had been a strange light, blue and silver... and other things it hurt even to remember... and pain. He had never felt such pain. It had been as if his mind and body were being ground down to their component atoms. 

Well, he wasn't in pain now. Neither was he on the deck of the wrecked cruiser or on the ground outside. He was quite definitely in a comfortable bed. 

Cautiously, he opened his eyes a slit, then closed them again quickly as someone he didn't know moved into his field of vision. The one glimpse, though, had revealed what appeared to be a medical centre. 

A firm voice asked. "How long before he regains consciousness?" 

"It depends." This voice was also male but lighter, with a singsong note. "As you know the effect of transfer shock varies with the individual. Generally, the younger and stronger the person, the quicker the recovery. This one could wake at any time. The human girl, Dayna Mellanby, woke a few hours ago. She's sleeping again, under sedation. The other three will take longer. The unknown factor is that any extra repair needed during re-creation also slows recovery from transfer shock." 

"None of them are in any danger, though?" 

"No. Don't sound so worried, Ricel. After all, they aren't personal friends of yours."

"No, but if anything untoward happens to Avon, the Director will have my hide nailed to the wall of her office. I insisted on a major Scoop operation to bring the man here, and at the risk of giving away our existence to the Terran Federation at that." 

"Is he worth it?" 

"Yes, Chan. He's worth it. He can't have spent three years on board _Liberator_ without learning the way it functions - and the man is a genius in his own right. I need him on the Yard Barrier project. If he lives, that is." 

"He will, though it may be a day or so before he wakes up. What about the others?" 

"I suspect that we'll leave that up to Avon. They probably aren't much use to us, but he may not co-operate without them. Certainly, they know far too much to let the Guild or the Cloud Worlds have them. The Mellanby girl is reputed to be a weapons technician. We may be able to put her under contract. I'll speak to the Director about it." 

"Hmmm. Seems like a big operation for one, or perhaps two, technicians." 

"Avon would be worth it even without his knowledge of _Liberator_ technology." 

"If you say so. What about the humanoid creatures we picked up?"

"As soon as they're fully recovered from transfer shock we'll let Bio have them." 

"Good. I'll be thankful to see them go. Bio may be fascinated by all that unprovoked aggression, but my staff are not..." 

The voices faded as their owners moved on. Tarrant relaxed a little and thought about what he had heard. 

They were no longer on Terminal, then, and safe, but prisoners, and the idea that his fate might rest in Avon's hands was too galling to contemplate. They were going to have to escape as soon as possible. 

He opened his eyes fully and looked about him. Yes. This was some kind of medical centre. 

An alien moved into view. It was tall and a light, greeny-blue colour, with a cream crest and golden eyes. Realising that Tarrant was conscious, it came closer. 

"It is all right," the creature said, in a voice meant to be reassuring, but which grated on Tarrant's nerves. "You are safe now, at Scitech Central in the Hoop Worlds. I know that this information means nothing to you at present, but be assured that my masters mean you no harm. Now you must rest quietly." 

Tarrant started to sit up, but fell back, his head whirling. Perhaps an escape attempt would have to wait. He tried a charming smile for the alien's benefit. "Perhaps you could explain..." 

"What is it that you wish me to explain, sir?" 

Tarrant opened his mouth, but for a moment, nothing came out. "Everything," he finally managed. 

"You will have to be more specific, sir." 

"Where am I?" 

"I have already answered that question. You are in a medical centre on the planet called Scitech Cen-" 

"Okay. Okay." It was with an effort that Tarrant stopped himself from grinding his teeth. "Where are my friends?" 

"In this building, sir. The-" 

"That's enough, Weeril." The voice was the lighter, singsong one of his overheard conversation. "Go and attend to the patient in room ninety-four." 

"Yes, sir." The alien left at once. 

The human came forward. He was small, slight and yellow-skinned, but his eyes, startlingly, were hazel and his hair was chestnut-brown. "I am Dr Chan. You must rest now, Captain Tarrant." He touched a control by the bed, and that was all Tarrant knew for a long time as he was swept under by dreamless sleep. 

 

Dayna sat down gingerly and regarded the man sitting opposite her with a certain wariness. She had been told that his name was Vanor Ricel and that he was responsible for her being here, wherever 'here' was. 

He did not look in any way extraordinary. He was in his thirties, she estimated. Tall, broad and powerful, with thick, dark hair curling about a square, determined face, and a short beard as thick and curly as his hair. He looked like a man it would be better not to cross, but his brown eyes held a surprising warmth as they met hers and held them almost hypnotically. 

He said, "Welcome to Scitech, Dayna. My name is Vanor Ricel. Please call me Van." 

"I'm more interested in knowing what exactly Scitech is than in pleasantries," Dayna replied stiffly. 

Ricel smiled. "Good. That sounds like the reaction of someone I can use. I hear that you're a weapons technician. How good are you?" 

"Good enough. What about my friends? I've been awake two days now and all that anyone will tell me is that they're 'all right'." 

"They are all right." 

"Convince me." 

"Easily done. Watch that screen." Ricel waved a hand at the wall. He touched a control panel on the arm of his chair and the wall suddenly seemed to dissolve. She could see Tarrant, hanging onto the arm of a pretty young woman wearing a medic's tunic, as one of the already familiar blue-green skinned aliens supported him on the other. The view changed, and now it was Cally, sitting up in bed, then Vila, asleep, and Avon, the same. 

"You see," said Ricel, as the wall went blank again. "They're fine - or they will be. You are the youngest, so you recovered more quickly from transfer shock, though Tarrant is not far behind you. Avon and Vila... Restal have yet to regain consciousness, but I can assure you that they will do so soon." 

"I suppose I ought to thank you," Dayna said, grudgingly. "For getting us away from Terminal, I mean." 

"Did you?" Ricel smiled again. Dayna found herself, reluctantly, liking him. "We knew you were in a Federation trap, but no other details. Tell me about... Terminal, Dayna." 

"Tell me about this place first." 

"Very well. You are on a planet called Scitech Central, in the Hoop." 

"I've never heard of it." 

"No-one in the Federation has. You are far beyond the Known Worlds, Dayna, further than you imagine. You were brought here because we need your help. All your help, but Avon's help in particular. I'm an engineer working on a project that needs his skills. I hope he will agree to help me. Would you rather have stayed on Terminal?" 

"Far from it," Dayna replied, with a little shudder. 

"So tell me about it." 

Dayna could see no reason not to do so. She could not know if Ricel was being frank with her, but she impulsively decided she would be frank with him. She felt a need to talk, to put her feelings about what had happened to her in the past year into words and not since the death of her father had she felt such easy sympathy from anyone, even Cally. She was quietly, instinctively, sure that Ricel would understand everything she told him. "You know about us? About the Liberator? About Blake?" 

"As much as we could glean from Federation broadcasts." 

Dayna laughed. "They'd hardly tell you the truth... All right then. It started with Avon. Avon's... difficult. You're never quite sure what he's going to do, but this time he surpassed himself. He practically threw us all off the flight deck..."

 

"...and the next thing I remember is waking up here at Scitech Central, as you call it. Wherever that is." 

Ricel was silent for a while, his face impassive, yet Dayna was oddly certain that something about her story had moved him. 

As the silence became overlong, she decided to break it. "What is it?" 

Ricel jumped slightly. "What is what?" 

"What is Scitech Central? You're just giving me names, not information." 

"I'll show you something," Ricel said briskly, getting to his feet and offering Dayna his hand. She was rather flattered and also glad of his support as he guided her through the door, along a short hallway, and out into the open air. 

It was early evening, when artificial lighting has little effect on fading daylight and bright moonlight. Dayna could see little except the low boxes of the surrounding buildings, with their haphazard window-studs of light. 

Van was looking up at the sky. Dayna looked too. Despite herself, she gasped and clung more tightly his arm. 

The sky was dark, unclouded, and it was full of worlds, some tiny pinpoints, others huge and close; white and green and red and grey and blue against the navy sky, like spherical lamps hung from its arching dome. 

"Oh," said Dayna, in a very small voice. 

"We call it the Hoop," Ricel said, matter-of-factly. "It's artificial: a vast ring of small worlds orbiting a yellow dwarf slightly smaller than Sol. None of the worlds are bigger than Titan. Many are as small as Phobos, but they all have very regular, stable orbits, as if they had no influence on each other. They will never collide. A majority have a gravity of nine point four Earth normal and biospheres compatible with human life, though some have stranger atmospheres and gravities." 

"That's incredible." 

"Yes, it is. And it's only part of the story. Whoever built the Hoop left its installations intact when they abandoned it, hundreds of years ago. Those installations are still working. One of them is a kind of transmission device. We call it the Scoop. It creates a bridge through a dimension where only energy can exist and space, as we know it, does not. That... bridge... carries a scanning beam which makes a complete pattern, down to quark level, of whatever is being scooped and also captures its energy field. Both are brought here, and the matter is re-created from the scan-pattern and the energy field installed within it. When the Builders left, they also left a subject race, the wi'h, who experimented with the Scoop. Years ago, they brought the first human spacecraft here." 

"Where is 'here'? In relation to the Federation, that is?" 

"Look there, Dayna, thirty degrees above the horizon. To the right of the blue-green world. What do you see?" 

"I'm... not sure..." Dayna admitted. "It's not a nebula... too hazy to be a multiple star-system... besides, it's too big..." 

"Bigger than you think. That's the Milky Way Galaxy, Dayna. We're looking at it from the Greater Magellanic Cloud." 

Dayna felt a rush of total panic. "You expect me to believe that?" 

"Not expect. But facts are facts and, in time, you will have to believe." 

"I don't want to hear any more of this!" Dayna cried, pulling herself away from his supporting hand. 

"I'm sorry that you feel that way, Dayna. I had hoped that we could be friends. A contract with us would offer you opportunities you've never even dreamed existed. We need you here. We think that you need us. After all, what would have happened to you if we had left you on Terminal? You said yourself that there was no way for you to get off that planet." 

"Avon would have found a way!" Dayna shouted. 

"He can't work miracles." 

"You don't know Avon!" Dayna whirled on her heel and stalked back into the building, leaving Ricel standing, looking after her, with a very odd smile on his face. 

"Maybe I don't, at that," he murmured, "but I'm learning..." 

 

"I wish to see my friends," Cally repeated. 

Dr Chan shook his head. "No. You are still too weak." 

"Can I bring you anything, Mistress?" the white-crested alien asked in its high voice as it cleared away the remains of the meal it had brought earlier. 

"Do not call me 'Mistress'." 

"As you command, Lady." 

Cally noticed Chan's smothered grin and gave up. "I have all that I need, thank you, except my friends." 

"That will be all," Chan said sharply to the alien. 

It left silently. Cally wondered why, though the aliens did all the menial jobs and many of the skilled ones she had seen so far, they were never left alone with her. Another puzzle in this most puzzling place. 

"You still need rest," Chan told her. "Try to sleep." 

"Thank you. I will try." _Later_ , Cally added to herself, as Chan disappeared through the door. 

As soon as she was sure that he had gone, Cally got up and padded after him. The door was locked. Cally glared at it in frustration. If only Vila... 

Ah. 

//Vila.// She reached out into nothingness, calling. If only Vila was in range. //Vila, I am locked in. Can you get me out?// 

Naturally, there was no reply. 

Cally sat down on the edge of the bed and waited. 

It was over an hour later that the door slid open. 

"Ah, there you are," said Vila, standing aside as Cally hurried past him and into the corridor beyond. "I must say that you look better in the standard outfit than I do, but then, you would." 

Cally seemed puzzled for a moment, then glanced down at herself. She was wearing a loose, light green tunic that fell to mid-thigh, and nothing else. So was Vila. Dismissing the comment as unimportant, she said, "What took you so long?" 

"Long? I wasn't even sure I could get out of bed. I've been ill, you know. Then those blue alien thingies kept flitting in and out, sneaking about the place... enough to give anyone the creeps... but I thought you might be in trouble, so... here I am." 

Cally examined his face carefully. He was certainly very pale. "Do you want to go back to your room?" 

"I think I prefer you to the aliens. Let's go find the others." 

Cally looked up and down the corridor. She had seen a lot of corridors in her short but eventful career and they didn't differ very much from one another. This one was longer than some she had been in, and it had a rather large number of doors. 

"Which room were you in?" she asked. 

"That one," said Vila, pointing to a door two rooms up from Cally's. "That one next to yours is empty. The one opposite is unlocked, so I didn't bother with it." 

"Let's try the next one." 

"That's unlocked too." 

"The one over there, then." 

Vila examined it. "Locked," he said, with satisfaction, and set to work. "Hope it's Dayna in there. With my luck it'll be Avon or Tarrant. Ah..." The door slid open. 

Cally peered round the edge, then disappeared inside with a glad cry. Vila followed her. 

Avon lay in the bed, propped up by pillows. As she reached him, Cally bent down and hugged him, much to his, and Vila's, surprise. "Are you all right?" she demanded, as she let him go. 

"I'm better than Chan tells me I am... you've met Chan?... but I wouldn't want to attempt a fifty kilometre hike." 

Vila closed the door and crossed to the bed. He peered hard at Avon. "You don't look like you could hike to the door," he said bluntly. "In fact... I don't think I could, either." He sat down hurriedly. 

Cally was instantly concerned. "I'm sorry, Vila. I shouldn't have made you get out of bed." 

"I don't like being locked up. Avon, did you know that we were locked up?" 

"No, but it does not surprise me. The locks do not appear to be particularly effective. If this is a Federation base, it is plainly not an efficient one." 

"Humph. Myself, I don't think even an inefficient Federation base would try and keep me in with the locks on these doors," Vila contributed. "Besides, they haven't brought out the thumbscrews. What's a Federation base without a torture machine or three?" 

Avon ignored the babble. "What about Tarrant and Dayna?" he asked Cally. 

"All I have been told is that they are well. I have not seen them." 

"Were... were they with us when we were captured?" The uncharacteristic hesitation in Avon's voice made Cally look at him anxiously. "I remember leaving the base on Terminal," he went on, in response to the look, "and finding the wrecked cruiser, but after that it's blank." 

"I'm not surprised," said Vila. "You were asleep on your feet." 

"I am glad that you do not remember the pain," said Cally. 

Avon's expression grew grim. "Unfortunately, I remember that rather well." 

Cally reached out to touch his hand, then thought better of it. "There is not much to tell. We were on board the wrecked cruiser. You were asleep. There was a strange light, blue and silver, coming from everywhere and nowhere. I was paralysed by it. Then there was nothing but pain and I blacked out. When I woke I was here, in a room like this one, and no-one would tell me anything except that you were alive." 

There was silence for a time, then Avon said, "Yes, we are alive. Unless Tarrant has offended our hosts too drastically, I think we can assume that he and Dayna are also alive. If they are in the same condition as we are it is useless to plan a physical escape at this point, but we cannot assume that we are safe. Our first step must be to acquire knowledge, where we are, why we are here, and what these people want of us." 

"Good," said Vila. "I'm all for a bit of peace and quiet. It's been a long while since we had any." 

"You're willing to take my advice?"

Vila and Cally exchanged startled glances. Cally decided to challenge the astonishing question. "Why this sudden attack of diffidence, Avon?" she demanded. "What are you trying to make us do?" Instantly, she knew that she was wrong. The hurt on Avon's face was quickly covered, but it was real all the same. 

His voice was icy as he explained. "I made a bad mistake, taking Liberator through that cloud. It cost us the ship." 

"It cost Servalan the ship," Cally corrected. "Would you rather have her alive and free and in control of _Liberator_?" 

"That would not have happened. Vila would have taken the ship out of the system on my order." 

"Like hell I would!" Vila snapped. Then, "I mean... oh, damn it, Avon, why didn't you tell us you were going after Blake?" 

Avon did not answer. 

Cally was smiling. "Well, then we would certainly not have left Terminal. That was the reason, wasn't it, Avon? You knew that Vila and I would never leave without Blake..." She stopped, and her voice was gentle as she added, "You can work out for yourself why we would never have left, knowing the little that we did know." 

Avon closed his eyes for a moment. "Irrational. You either trust my judgement or you do not." 

"Whether we trust your judgement depends on what you are trying to accomplish." 

"That is not trust." Avon sighed heavily, then his eyes snapped open. "Very well. What I am trying to accomplish is to save our lives and gain our freedom. I suppose you approve of that?" 

"You know that we do." 

"Then go back to your rooms and, if you are well enough, start collecting information."

 

"I suppose we should have anticipated this," I commented, watching the little tableau on the screen. "We had Restal's criminal record to warn us." 

"But those locks are supposed to be tamperproof!" Chev Manster was enraged, but as this was quite often the case I took no notice. Scitech's Chief of Security was a fiery little man with more than a touch of paranoia. "Restal broke into that room in twenty seconds flat!" He glared at me as if it was my fault. I refrained from remarking that Vila must be out of practice. Manster has never liked me. I doubt if he liked his mother. 

"It's hardly important," I said, trying to soothe him. Everyone who came into contact with Chev Manster spent a lot of time soothing him. "What is important is that Restal and Cally, at least, seem prepared to follow Avon's lead. So after we recruit Avon we should have no further trouble from them. It also shows that we will have to treat them well if we are to ensure his co-operation." 

Manster growled, then scowled at me from under lowered eyebrows. "None of this gels with his reputation," he pointed out. 

"No, it doesn't, does it?" I agreed, still watching the screen. Part of me was deeply ashamed of spying on people who had been my close friends, but there was another that could not bear to look away. 

"Will you tackle Avon's recruitment yourself?" 

I tried to be casual about answering that question, but my heart was suddenly pounding. "Oh, I think that that's the Director's job. Avon warrants the Red Carpet treatment." 

When was I going to get the opportunity to speak to Avon in complete privacy? Here at Scitech Central there was always a chance of being overheard... and I was beginning to wonder if I ought to speak to him at all. I had already interfered far too much in his life already. How was he going to react to this further interference? I had sworn to leave him alone to find his own destiny. He did not know of that oath, or that I had already broken it, but I did - and I was not sure that I could face him with that knowledge. 

A terrible screech, too high pitched to be human, shattered my train of thought. For a couple of seconds I looked about wildly then, realising that it had come from the speaker, I turned my attention to the screen. 

Avon and Vila were also looking startled and Cally was already halfway to the door. 

A touch of the control buttons took me outside the door before her, into the corridor where a group of wi'h cowered before the onslaught of half a dozen of the hairy humanoids - links, Dayna had called them - that had come with the Terminal package. Two of the wi'h lay on the floor, seeping their pale pink blood. The other, a female, had had her head literally ripped from her shoulders. 

The door slid open and Cally came through it. 

Manster hit the intercom. "Guards! Medical Centre. Corridor four. Humanoids attacking humans." 

As he started to lift his hand from the control I brought mine down on top of it. "Kill the humanoids!" I ordered. "They've killed wi'h and will kill humans. Kill them." 

"Bio won't like that," Manster commented, taking my hand in his other hand and removing it. 

"Damn Bio." 

"I'm not sure that I like it, either." Manster's voice held a barely controlled fury. "I'm not at all sure that I like you giving my men orders, Ricel." 

I did not take my eyes from the screen. "Later. This is more important." 

 

Cally paused in the door for an instant, weighing up the situation, aware, by some instinct, that Vila was just behind her. 

The links did not see her. They had pulled another of the crested aliens from the little huddle and were casually pulling it to pieces. It was screaming, a high-pitched shriek that hammered at Cally's ears. 

She leaped forward, her hand striking down at the nearest link's neck. Vila, seizing the opportunity, kicked another up the backside so hard that it sprawled straight into the wall. 

The links turned to face the new threat, hurling themselves straight at Cally and Vila. Cally shoved her companion to one side and shifted her balance, catching a leaping link in mid-air and using its own momentum to hurl it onwards. It hit the floor hard, wailing as it rolled and skidded along the polished surface. 

The blue-green aliens had not moved. 

"Go!" Cally shouted at them. "Leave us!" 

Vila yelped a warning as he danced around an enraged link. The beast caught him by the arm but Vila fought back furiously, lashing out with fists, elbows, feet and knees just as wildly and desperately as the beast itself. Then Cally came in with a hard punch to what would have been a nerve centre if the link had still been human. This tactic proved effective and the link went down. 

"Vila... get the injured... alien..." she panted, turning a neat pirouette to kick another link in the genital area. 

Vila was only too glad to get out of the action. He dropped down beside the injured alien and gripped it under the armpits, pulling it towards the door. Then a link got past Cally's defence and she went down under its weight. 

"Cally!" 

Vila dropped the alien and leaped to her aid, kicking repeatedly at the link's head. 

Avon's voice said, loudly, from behind them, "Get back in here. Now!" 

Cally rolled free of the unconscious link. She and Vila picked up the wounded alien between them and scurried back into Avon's room. The remaining links charged after them as the last of the living aliens disappeared from view. 

Avon stepped past them as they plunged through the door, shaking out the glittering thermal blanket he had stripped from his bed. It billowed out in the breeze that seemed to be coming through the door. 

The strangeness of the colour and movement startled the links, as it would have done any wild animal, and they retreated, gibbering. Avon tossed the blanket at them. Without waiting to see what effect this had, he jumped backwards through the open door. 

The movement made his head spin, his own voice was distant in the encroaching greyness. "Vila... close... lock... door." 

"It's done." Vila's voice was close and Avon felt an arm supporting him. "Thanks, Avon. Are you all right?" 

"Yes. Of course I'm all right." He managed to get a snap into his voice as his vision began to clear but Vila didn't let him go until he straightened and pulled himself free. 

"Good," said Vila, "because I'm not. I don't like getting into fights, Avon, especially not with hairy monsters. What the hell were they?" 

"Links. From Terminal." It was Cally who spoke from where she was kneeling on the floor, trying to stem the blood pumping from the side of the wounded alien. "Get me something to use as a compress, Vila." 

"Pillow. From the bed," said Avon. 

"Why me?" Vila complained, but he was already on the move. As he crossed to the bed, he noticed that the brisk breeze was coming from the air conditioning. The local controls had been stripped and bore evidence of hasty tampering. Vila grinned. Trust Avon to leave nothing to chance. 

There was a heavy thump at the door, as if a body had crashed against it. Then another. The metal door was beginning to bulge inwards, straining against the frame. Vila thrust the pillow at Cally, snatched up the nearest heavy object - a table lamp with a cylindrical stone base - and hurried to join Avon beside the door. 

The door shook with another thump, then another, and there was a whining electronic noise in the background. 

Avon held out his hand. "Give me that." 

"No, thanks. Get your own weapon." Vila clutched the heavy lamp even tighter. 

The door burst inwards. Vila, with a coolness he was later to find inexplicable, stepped in front of Avon and brought the lamp down with all his strength on the head of the onrushing link. There was a dull crack, followed by a squelching noise as the skull caved in. 

Ignoring the whining noises and the thuds from outside, Vila raised his bloodstained weapon again. Movement in the door made him lash out, but this time his wrist was intercepted by Avon and the lamp wrested from his fingers. 

Vila started a howl of protest, then realised that what he had been about to hit was not a link at all but a man in a grey uniform, carrying a gun in his hand. 

"You people all right?" he asked. 

"No thanks to you?" Avon snarled. "What the hell is happening in this place?" 

"I don't know, sir," the man in uniform said stiffly. "I don't know how those beasts could have escaped." 

"Well, you'd better fin-" 

"Wait, Avon," Cally interrupted. "This one is dying. She needs a medic. Quickly," 

The guard glanced towards them. "Oh, that. It's only a wi'h. Don't worry about it." 

Cally's eyes blazed at him. "She is a living, intelligent creature and she is in pain. Get a medic or be judged less human than this being you despise." 

The man retreated out into the corridor, as if Cally's stare had physically repelled him. 

"Careful, Cally," Avon warned. "Our lives may depend on not antagonising our hosts." 

Cally ignored him. The wi'h was whimpering as she lay in Cally's arms, and she guessed that there was little that she could do to help... little than anyone could do. Avon watched impassively. Vila looked down at the dead link and the growing pool of blood and pulverised brain, then at the dying wi'h, and closed his eyes, gulping frantically to stop himself from being sick. 

"What are you doing?" The voice was Chan's. Vila opened his eyes to see the medic framed in the doorway. He bustled into the room and went straight to Avon. "You shouldn't be on your feet. You were particularly badly affected by the transfer shock..." 

"I am perfectly well. It is the alien who needs your attention." 

Chan glanced down with an expression of disgust. "I don't work with wi'h. Besides-" He stopped with his hand on Avon's arm as the look in the glacial brown eyes froze him where he stood. 

"I told you that I am perfectly well." 

"What sort of medic are you?" Cally cried. "How can you let any creature suffer so? Are you a man or a robot?" 

"Go and help it." Avon's voice was quiet but commanding. Then he added, "I am certainly not going to do anything you say until you do." 

Chan hesitated, then snapped, "If you don't lie down, man, you'll fall down. If I help that... creature... will you go back to bed?" 

"Perhaps." 

Chan glared at him then, recognising the implacability of Avon's expression, went to look at the wi'h. Seconds later, he was calling for assistance and equipment. 

As the stretcher arrived, Cally rejoined Avon and Vila. "I think that they will be too late, but thank you, Avon." 

"The alien is not important, but I cannot have you restrained for assault." 

"I would not have hurt Chan, Avon. That would not have helped. He was right about you, though. Come and sit down. You look exhausted, and so do you, Vila." 

"I just feel sick," Vila complained. 

"Come on." Cally tugged gently at Avon's arm and he let her lead him over to the bed. His legs felt as if they weren't there at all. It took tremendous effort to lift his feet onto the bed. Cally sat down beside him and he leaned against her. He decided that she was more comfortable than a pillow and was grateful. He felt the slight movement of the bed as Vila sat down beside them, and he was grateful for that, too. If only he wasn't so tired... 

Chan came back into the room, accompanied by a small, slim, brown-skinned, fair-haired man in the same grey uniform that the guard had worn, but with rather more insignia. Chan said, "This is Security Chief Manster." 

Almost-colourless eyes surveyed them. "I apologise for this occurrence. Someone... let those... creatures escape." 

"Pumped them full of stimulants to wake them up, too," Chan added. 

Manster gave him a look of total contempt. Plainly, he did not like being interrupted. "It still isn't clear what he meant to accomplish. Van Ricel thinks that the attack was aimed at you. I'm not sure that I agree. You would have been safe if you had stayed in your rooms. Be kind enough to do so in the future." 

"I think that you would be more comfortable if you went back to your rooms," Chan agreed, looking disapprovingly at the trio on the bed. "And you, young lady, could do with a change of clothing." Cally looked down at herself, noticing for the first time the cerise stains of blood that covered the front of her tunic. Her hands were deep pink too. Avon, though, did not seem to mind, and had gone to sleep, his head resting against the bloodstained tunic stretched across her thighs. He looked drained, much younger than he was, and very vulnerable. Cally felt an aching tenderness for him. 

Chan's voice was more gentle as he said, "We'll move Avon to another room close by. You can all see each other as often as you wish... and your other friends, too, though they've already been moved out of the Medical Centre into more comfortable quarters. Come, Cally. Everything will be explained when Avon sees the Scitech Director." 

"When will that be?" Avon asked, without opening his eyes, startling Cally, who had been quite sure that he slept. 

"Soon enough," Manster snapped. 

"Tomorrow, if you are well enough," said Chan. 

"I will be," said Avon. 

 

"So we now know that someone had tapped into the surveillance devices at the Medical Centres," Manster said. He was making his report to the Scitech Director, and he was on the defensive, which meant he was being very aggressive indeed. "That person must have revived and released the links as soon as he realised that Cally and Restal were out of their rooms and had opened Avon's door." 

"It is clear that we have an enemy agent - probably a Fraternity agent - here at Scitech Central. I expect you to find him or her at once, Security Chief." 

Manster glowered at the Director. She was certainly right, but she was also impugning his efficiency. "We're checking the background of everyone at the Medical Centre, but I might point out, Director, that the only person who knew of the _Liberator's_ crew's presence who was not born here in the Hoop is sitting right across from you." 

"And who was sitting beside you when the links were released," I pointed out, as everyone looked at me. 

"Which proves nothing," said Manster. "You could have had an accomplice." 

"Me, maybe?" Jake enquired, with a disgusted look in Manster's direction. "Give it up, Chev. The _Liberator_ crew wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for Van, so he'd hardly try and get 'em killed. Anyway, he's far too intelligent to do anything in such a hit and miss fashion. Suppose the creatures had taken off in the opposite direction?" 

"Impossible. All the other exits were deliberately blocked." 

"Even so, I suggest that you look elsewhere for your culprit, Manster," said the Director coldly. "Ricel's innocence is quite obvious to everyone but you. This seems to be the work of an outside organisation and the only one that probably has agents inside Scitech Central is the Fraternity. Since the woman Valonia took over, they have become an increasing nuisance. Find the agent. Alive, please." 

Manster's face froze at the rebuke. "We can't be too obvious. There are ten Guild ships in the spaceport now. If the agent has retreated to the Freeport and we go in after him, the Guild will-" 

"Find the agent. I want whoever it was here for interrogation. Yesterday, Manster! Your job was to protect Avon. You failed at that. I do not expect you to fail at this." 

As Manster bowed stiffly, Jake whispered to me. "Ten to one he will. Boy, does that guy hate you, Van." 

I said, "He hates everyone. I think he hates himself," but even as I spoke I knew I could not dismiss his threat so easily. Manster was a dangerous enemy. I hoped his hatred could be diverted in the direction of the Fraternity. If not, I might have to do something about him... and that would be both dangerous and difficult.


	4. Sirens

Tarrant leaned back on the lounger and stared up at the dark blue sky with its impossible scattering of worlds... Wherever this place was, it was certainly beyond the Known Worlds... beyond Federation influence. Where was he? Well, he had been promised that he would 'soon know'. Later that day, in fact, Avon was apparently scheduled to talk to the Director - whoever he was. Why Avon? It was galling that no-one wanted to talk to him. 

He sat up and looked about him. 

The terrace was bright with early morning sunlight, its gardens and small pink houses almost empty of life. He had been left here alone to rest in the sunshine, though he had protested that he was perfectly well. This little cluster of dwellings was some kind of convalescent home, he fancied, but there were no other temporary tenants. He'd seen a number of wi'h, but they seemed to avoid him unless another human was present. 

I'm alone, Tarrant thought. I can leave whenever I like... but where do I go? I don't even know what planet this is. Yet... maybe I can find out where we are and what is going on here. Yes. If I can yet those facts, I'll already know what's going on when Avon presents _his_ version. That should give me an edge. In fact, if I can get in first... 

It was a pleasing prospect. 

Having made his decision, Tarrant got up off the lounger and took the path through the silvery-pink shrubbery. 

It was as he left the dwellings and found himself crossing a side, golden lawn, when he heard a yell, then pounding footsteps behind him. Tarrant took to his heels. Within seconds he was panting, his legs weighed down by fatigue. A grey mist rose before his eyes... then through it he saw trees... dense undergrowth... 

He plunged into it, threading his way through the thick-growing vegetation. Falling to his knees, he burrowed into a clump of bright-red stalks and plate-shaped yellow leaves. The space underneath was full of prickly dead stalks, but it was dry... and concealing. Tarrant lay very still, trying to still his harsh breathing. He felt as if he had run for kilometres, not just for a few metres. He must be much weaker than he had supposed. 

He could hear crashing noises now, and cursing, as whoever was following him started to search the undergrowth. Tarrant remained where he was. He was acutely uncomfortable. Not only were the stalks sticking into him, but they gave off a most disgusting smell. He did not want to remember what they reminded him of. 

It was a long time before the noises went away. Even then, Tarrant waited a long time before he moved; when he did, cramp shot through him. He yelped and fell over, cursing. He spent the next five minutes massaging the cramps out of his legs and thinking that there must be an easier way to find out what was going on. 

Finally, though, he got back to his feet and stamped through the miniature jungle. Seconds later, he found himself a pathway. He followed this through the trees until he came out onto a wider road. He stopped, not knowing which way to go. 

It was then that he saw the spaceship burning its way down through the sky. A spacecraft meant a spaceport. Home. 

Tarrant turned in the direction it had taken. 

He soon grew very hot and very tired, and began to think that he had made a bad mistake. The road stretched on forever over the flat, golden countryside. Also, his feet were sore. His clothes had been returned to him, but he had been wearing soft slippers when he had made his escape. He hoped he would not be too conspicuous among the local population - he would not, if most people wore what the people at the medical centre had been wearing - of course, that was always assuming that he would eventually find a population... 

He was still brooding on this when he saw the tip of a spaceport control tower peeping over the close horizon. He stood in the middle of the roadway and stared at it longingly, no longer sure of his ability to walk that that far. 

A siren wail interrupted his reverie. He whirled, crouching, hand going to his non-existent gun, to find himself face to face with the shuddering nose of a ground car. The driver, a wi'h, stared at him out of wide, golden eyes. The man in the rear passenger seat flung open the door and leaped out to face Tarrant pugnaciously. 

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted, grabbing a handful of Tarrant's tunic and shaking him. 

Tarrant seized the wrist and pushed it away, though it took all the strength he had. "I'm going to the spaceport," he replied. 

"On foot? What's a Hoopie doing travelling around Scitech Central on foot?" There was disbelief and contempt in the man's voice. 

Tarrant was stuck for an answer, mainly because he hadn't understood a word the man had said. "Maybe I like walking..." was the best he could manage. 

The newcomer laughed harshly. "Have you escaped from a lunatic asylum, Hoopie?" he asked, letting Tarrant go. "Who'd walk when they've got these bloody ground shuttles?" He jerked a thumb at the ground car and the patient wi'h at the controls. "With a personal pilot, yet. Try another, Hoopie." 

"What does it matter to you?" Tarrant challenged. 

"I don't like being stopped when I'm trying to shake the dust of this stinking planet off my feet... and I don't like Hoopies. You got anything to say about that?" 

Tarrant ignored the question. Something else about what the man had said struck him as being much more important. "Shake the..." He also noticed, for the first time, that the man standing in front of him wore black coveralls with a stylistic spaceship emblazoned in gold on the breast. "You're a spacer..." 

The man's grey eyes grew angry. "Even a Hoopie should be able to identify Guild uniform." 

Tarrant tried a charming smile. It had about as much effect on the man in front of him as it usually had on Avon. "I'm sorry. I'm not very good at uniforms. The Guild... you say?" 

The other man was looking at him with a very odd expression. "Now you tell me you don't know about the Guild of Shipcrew...? I'm beginning to think that you are a lunatic." He turned back towards the groundcar. 

"What are you going to do?" Tarrant asked. He felt that he ought to do something... attack the other man and steal the groundcar, perhaps, but the man did not look a pushover and there was always the wi'h. Maybe he ought to take to his heels, but he felt too weak to do that, either. 

"Call the authorities back there and have you picked up. I don't see why a Guildsman should be bothered with you." 

"No... wait..." Tarrant moved forward. "Listen, I can't go back. I'm not one of them. I was a sort of prisoner..." 

"What is a 'sort of' prisoner?" 

Tarrant took a deep breath and plunged in: "I was brought here by some sort of matter transmission device. The people here have all been very solicitous but I've not been allowed to see my crew..." 

"Crew?" The other man regarded him with sudden interest. "Spaceship crew?" 

"Yes." 

"You mean to tell me that Scitech have brought a spaceship through on the Scoop and haven't informed us?" 

"Well, not exactly. My ship - _Liberator_ > \- was destroyed before we were brought through the Scoop." 

" _Liberator?_ Your ship? You were a ship's captain?" 

Tarrant hesitated for only a split second. "Yes." 

"Then Scitech have no right to keep you here, and they've broken agreements by not informing us. That is... very, very dangerous. I think that you'd better come with me. Get in the groundcar, Captain-?" He raised a questioning eyebrow. 

"Tarrant. Del Tarrant." 

"I'm Geor Ardron, Captain of the Guild Ship, _Cloudstalker_. I think we're going to be useful to each other, Captain Tarrant, very useful indeed. But first, we need to talk. Get in the groundcar." 

 

The short, grey-haired woman rose from her seat. "Avon, it's very good to meet you at last. I trust that you're feeling better." 

"Much better, thank you." Avon squeezed the plump hand that was offered him very briefly, noting that the grip was firm, then sat in the indicated chair. "I would feel even better if you would explain how I come to be here." 

"I thought that Chan had explain-" 

"That I had been brought to the Greater Magellanic Cloud by some sort of long-range E-space transmission device, yes, but he was not very clear on its function." 

"I'm not surprised. He's a medic, not a physicist. There are others who will give you the technical details - not that we understand everything about it, even now. The aliens who constructed the Hoop - we call them the Builders for obvious reasons - were thousands of years in advance of man." 

"Yes, I thought that this system must be a construct. It is most impressive. These... Builders... are gone, then?" 

"Yes, long ago. Only their slaves, the wi'h, remain. It was they who brought the first humans through the Scoop. They can operate and repair most of the Builders' technology, but they seem to know very little of the principles behind it." 

"All that may explain the physical means by which I came here and what 'here' actually is, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Firstly: how did you know where and when to aim your 'Scoop'? Plainly, chance was not involved." 

"No, it was not. For their own unfathomable reasons, the Builders constructed a listening device in that section of the Milky Way Galaxy occupied by mankind. It picks up transmissions: human, alien, robotic... even those made between two points on the same planet... and it transmits them through E-space to the computers here." 

Avon laughed harshly. "For that you would need a device the size of a star." 

"It could be that big. We simply do not know. It took our ancestors some time to understand what it was doing and to get the computers to sort out the human language signals for our use." 

"I would," Avon said carefully, "very much like to see these computers." 

"We want you to see them. We can operate them, of course, but their engineering has baffled our scientists. Anyway, one of our project engineers, Vanor Ricel, had an interest in you and your ship. He had the computers set to sort out and relay to him any transmitted information concerning you, your crew, or the Liberator. That information included the messages between you and Servalan, though we did not know then that she was involved, only that Blake could not be." 

Avon's expression was closed. "Blake could not be?" 

"Over a standard year ago there was a coded transmission sent between two Federation bases on the planet Jevron. It reported that Blake was dead." 

Something was finally extinguished in Avon at that moment, though his face remained impassive. "So you knew that I'd walked into a trap?" 

"Yes. And that you, one of the people in the Milky Way Galaxy that we wanted most to scoop, were suddenly available. As the co-ordinates were so far out of Federation space we were willing to take the risk." 

"So there's a risk?" 

"We do not want to attract the attention of the Federation. At present, they do not have the means to reach us, but we do not want them to look in this direction once they have perfected their intergalactic ships." 

"The war with the Andromedans has stopped research in that direction." 

"Temporarily. Here, Avon, we think in decades and centuries. We have been here a long time." 

"How long?" 

"Five centuries." The Director settled back in her chair. Plainly, she was about to embark on a prepared speech. "When the wi'h operated the Scoop to bring the first ships here, there was a... difference of opinion... among the crew and passengers. The scientists and technologists wanted to stay here in the Hoop to learn the Builders' secrets. They founded the Association of Scientists and Technologists - Scitech - I am its Director, and this is our headquarters, Scitech Central. It was the Builders' technical centre - they didn't have a headquarters or capital in our sense of the words. Scitech now supplies all the technology for the human-occupied worlds in the Cloud. Some of it is Builders' technology, of course, and some is gained via the people we scoop and from the listening device but a lot of it comes from our own research..." Ardron said: "This planet is Scitech Central. It's the capital of the Hoop Worlds, which are controlled by Scitech. It was colonised by people who were more interested in scavenging the technology of the Builders - the aliens who constructed the Hoop system and the matter transmitter that brought you here - than in exploring and colonising the Cloud. What they found out about the Builders they've kept strictly to themselves, just letting us have crumbs of it at a vastly inflated price: our co-operation for transport of food and raw materials from the Cloud Worlds." 

"So there are other settled worlds in the Cloud?" 

"Yes. Thirty-three of them. Anyway, when Scitech scoop anything, they get first chance at recruiting any technicians, but they can't use the spaceships and any spacecrew they bring through would not take kindly to being confined to this single system, big though it is... just like the men and women who founded the Guild. They saw the sterility of remaining in the Hoop and moved outwards. And we're still the explorers, the out-reachers, the only people with any real guts and curiosity in the Cloud. We're also still the only people with interstellar travel, and neither the Hoop nor the Cloud Worlds could exist without us to carry trade goods and information...

"Our main problem is the Guild. They were formed from the crews of the ships brought here by the Scoop. Once they realised that they would have to take second place to the technicians here in the Hoop they moved on, thinking they would find something better. Most of the non-technicians who came through the Scoop went with them, but they'd had enough of the Guild by the time they reached the habitable worlds. They colonised them while the Guild ships carried on with their plundering. 

"Soon, though, the Guild realised that it needed us if it was going to keep its ships spaceworthy, but they were terrified of us breaking their monopoly on interstellar travel. They insisted that all the ships and shipcrew brought through the Scoop be handed over to them. We comply because, though the Hoop itself has automatic defences which make its capture or destruction impossible, we are reliant on the Cloud Worlds for raw materials and food. All those supplies are carried on Guild ships and, even if we managed to build or retain a few ships for ourselves, the Guild has enough firepower to lay siege to the Hoop and starve us into surrender." 

"What about bringing supplies through the Scoop?" Avon suggested. 

"The power build-up for a single scoop takes up to twenty days and the mass we can bring through is limited. It would prolong the time we could hold out, but no more than that." 

"Didn't the Builders have ships?" 

"Yes, but they left only short range shuttles behind. Those can't operate over interstellar distances. They also left... but I'll let Vanor Ricel tell you about that. There is a chance of building our own fleet but to get at the equipment we have to pass a very sophisticated force barrier. Ricel thinks you can help him do it." 

"Who is this Vanor Ricel?" 

"Perhaps our best engineer. I also want you to talk to him because he comes from the Cloud Worlds. He's an outsider here, like yourself, if not from so far afield, and he has found just how lucrative a contract with Scitech can be. We don't limit advancement to those born in the Hoop, Avon. We work by results. Ricel comes from a farming family on a world called Creolm, but one of our technicians on contract there recognised his potential and gave him basic technical training. Strictly illegal, of course, but it paid off. After the technician died, Ricel made his way to us. He's given us a completely new understanding of force field technology. You'll be working with him, if you agree. 

"As for the rewards... we will pay a commensurate price for your skills. Your own world, perhaps. There are ten thousand of them in the Hoop, most of them uninhabited. Every luxury the Cloud can provide and a seat on the governing board, if you are interested in power." 

"Who isn't?" said Avon. "What about the others?" 

"The woman Dayna Mellanby is reputed to be a weapons technician..." 

"A brilliant one." 

"Then we will offer her a contract. The others... Scitech has no need of them but, of course, they know too much to be allowed to leave the Hoop. We could kill them; we could imprison them... or you can take them under your personal protection. You may prefer human servants to the wi'h." 

 

"So you and your crew should have been passed to the Guild by right," said Ardron, "and, normally, you would have been. What's so special about you, Captain Tarrant?" 

"From what I've overheard, it's Avon they want. He's... one of my crew... an electronics and computer genius. He could virtually reconstruct the galaxy's most advanced computer systems from scratch, he invented the first detector shield, and he knows more than anyone about the construction of my ship." 

"And this ship was special?" 

"The fastest and most powerful ship in the Known Worlds. We had a matter transmission system of our own, too, though it was pretty short range compared with your Scoop. Wait. Why don't Scitech use the Scoop to bring in the goods they need and by-pass you entirely?" 

"Because there is only one Scoop, it can only be used infrequently, and only on an intergalactic scale. It won't work inside the Cloud." 

"So why don't you attack Scitech?" 

"Go in against Builder defences? You have to be kidding..." Ardron was silent for a few moments, apparently brooding on the injustice of life, then he spoke to the wi'h at the controls of the groundcar. "Take us back to the city." 

"What! I just escaped from there!" 

"You want to bring your crew out with you, don't you? Save them from slavery?" 

"Slavery?" Tarrant repeated stupidly. 

"They'll probably offer this crewman of yours, Avon, a contract, but the rest of you will be bound into slavery. That's what Scitech does to you if you aren't one of the chosen few who they regard as of high enough intelligence and technical training to become part of their organisation." 

"Then we have to get away." 

"You will," said Ardron, "but first you have to go back. Listen, this is what you have to do..."

 

"I'm glad this discussion has been so fruitful, Avon," the Director purred. 

"So am I," said Avon. "There is just one more thing, Director." His voice suddenly hardened. "As I see it, your aim is to destroy the Guild and gain control of the whole of the human occupied section of the Cloud." 

The Director's face was suddenly angry. "Who told you-?" 

"No-one told me. It is quite obvious that that is your plan. I have one question: if you needed me and needed a superior spaceship technology, why didn't you scoop _Liberator_?" 

The Director had recovered her composure. "To give it to the Guild?" 

"I'm sure that you could have found some way to hide it from them." 

"That would have been most unethical, Avon." 

"You have no more ethics than I have. Why didn't you scoop _Liberator_ , Director?" 

She smiled suddenly. "We tried. It didn't work. Something about the ship was resistant to the E-space field." 

"Thank you, Director." Avon was smiling too. "I appreciate frankness. Now, do you want my answer to your earlier offer?"

 

Tarrant's loudly protesting voice could be heard long before he arrived in the quiet lounge where Cally, Vila and Dayna were waiting. "I just went for a walk. I'm allowed to go for a walk, aren't I? You said that I wasn't a prisoner..." He was pushed into the lounge, looking annoyed and dishevelled, his face flushed. When the door closed behind him, he turned and glared at it as if that might disintegrate it. 

"What happened to you?" Dayna asked. 

"I went for a look around, that's all." 

"Plainly without permission. Why didn't you just ask our hosts, Tarrant? I did, and I got the full conducted tour." Dayna grinned. "You do everything the hard way, don't you?" 

Tarrant turned the glare on her. "Well, at least I could see more than just what they wanted me to see!" 

"And what was that?" Vila asked, too-innocently curious. 

The question flustered Tarrant. Despite his long and fascinating conversation with Ardron, he had seen very little other than vegetation. "There's a spaceport here," he offered. 

"I toured it," Dayna told him smugly. 

"And, in case you didn't know, we're not in the Known Worlds." 

"We're in the Greater Magellanic Cloud, brought here by a sort of matter transmission device called the Scoop," Dayna explained. "As far as I can make out, it took a full pattern of our body structures and re-created them here. It also took our life forces and memories to bring here too, leaving a dead shell behind." 

"You mean we're dead, back on Terminal?" Vila questioned incredulously. 

"Apparently." 

"But that's... that's..." 

"Ghoulish," Dayna agreed. 

"You seem to know a lot," said Tarrant, looking at her accusingly. 

"I've had a couple of conversations with one of the project engineers, a man called Vanor Ricel. They're supposed to be offering me a contract." 

"A contract for what?" 

Dayna shrugged. "I wish I knew. Perhaps Avon'll be able to tell us when he comes back from his meeting with the Scitech Director." 

"And why Avon?" Tarrant demanded. 

No-one answered him. 

"Do they think he can take decisions for all of us?" 

"I don't know what they think," said Vila. "Anyhow, if it's a trap, Avon'll see it." 

"As he did on Terminal?" Tarrant asked nastily. 

"Avon knew that Terminal was probably a trap," Cally said in her most deceptively gentle voice. "Why else would he have taken such careful precautions to see that we were not caught in it?" 

"Then why walk into it in the first place?" Tarrant asked. 

Cally smiled. "Because there was a chance that the bait was genuine, I suspect." 

"Not so that he could keep whatever spoils were going for himself?" 

"Blake wouldn't have let him," said Vila. 

"And Avon knew Blake very well," Cally added. 

"What are you all defending him for?" Tarrant shouted. 

"He is not here to defend himself," said Cally. 

"He cost us _Liberator._!" 

"I am aware of that," Avon's voice said quietly from the doorway. He came into the suddenly silent room and sank tiredly into a chair. "It is not relevant to our present situation. I think you had better listen to what I have to say." 

"Not relevant? Oh, I think it is. We don't take orders from you, Avon. You asked us to trust you once; we did, and you blew it." 

Avon's eyes met Tarrant's unflinchingly. "I made an error of judgement in taking the _Liberator_ into the cloud that destroyed her. You made one yourself in following me to the surface of Terminal, something I had specifically told you not to do. That gave Servalan a lever at precisely the wrong moment." 

"So now it's my fault?" 

"No. The blame is mine. I am willing to accept it." 

"Oh, that makes it all right, does it, that you're willing to accept the blame?" 

Cally got up and went to stand behind Avon. "It helps," she said. "What is done is done. This is no time to fight among ourselves, Tarrant. Avon did what he had to do. In his place, you might have done the same thing." 

Avon looked up at her with a strange feeling of _déja vu._

How many times had he heard Cally defend Blake in much the same fashion, and how many times had he been the attacker? He realised with a shock that he might well have spoken as Tarrant had spoken. Had Blake felt this way: unsure that he was right, wanting the wholehearted support of his crew but realising that he could never have it? 

_I could easily have said to Blake what Tarrant has just said to me,_ Avon thought. _If he had been sitting in this chair, I would have said it._ The thought sent a tremor through the very foundations of Avon's existence, a realisation that he was standing on the edge of a truth he did not want to acknowledge. If he plunged down the precipice, everything would change. 

The moment passed. He put the disquieting thought aside. 

"I doubt that Tarrant would have had enough intelligence to do anything I have done," he stated cuttingly. "Do you want me to catalogue the rest of your mistakes, Tarrant? The fiascos on Obsidian and Kairos? The incident with Bayban the Butcher? Your experiences with Moloch?" 

"I didn't lose us _Liberator!_ " 

Inwardly, Avon winced. Aloud, he said, "No. You didn't. You just came close to losing us all our lives. I happen to value mine rather more than _Liberator_. I don't know what value you put on yours. However, we are alive and in a very dangerous situation. As Cally says, we cannot afford to fight between ourselves." His voice rose, command crackling in it: "So sit down, shut up and listen!" 

As Tarrant started a furious retort, Dayna interrupted: "Do as he says, Tarrant." 

"Avon is right," said Cally. 

Vila simply chortled. 

Aware of the lack of support, Tarrant shut up and sat, fuming. 

"So what exactly did the Director tell you?" asked Dayna. 

"It's a long story," said Avon. 

 

"So," Avon said finally, "I told the Director that I accepted the contract provisionally and that you were under my protection. Dayna too, until she decides what to do next." 

"You mean we're all your slaves? That is so kind of you, Avon," Tarrant snarled. 

"You have a choice of either that, or imprisonment, or death. I can easily withdraw my protection if you prefer the second or third options. I did not have much choice, either. It is obvious that none of us will be allowed to leave. We know too much." 

"We could escape," Tarrant suggested. 

"To where?" Avon asked. 

"So you accept the Director's version as the whole truth?" 

"I accept nothing told to me as 'truth', but we must make a decision now on what data we have, not on conjecture. Certainly, Scitech has the technology it claims, and that must give it a very strong position in this society. Escape looks impossible, even if we were sure that we wanted to escape and, from what I have seen, escape seems far from being the most lucrative option." 

"For you, maybe." 

Avon's look in Tarrant's direction was deadly. "The idea of withdrawing my protection suddenly becomes very tempting indeed." As he spoke, Avon reached up and took Cally's hand as she leaned against his chair, pulling it down and fondling it. He felt immediate resistance, but she relaxed as he touched it against his ear and looked up at her warningly. 

As a signal it was remote, obscure, but Cally understood it. //They are watching us?// 

Avon squeezed her hand in confirmation. 

The next telepathic warning went out to all of them. //We are under surveillance. We must act as if we all agree with what Avon has said. It is the only way that they will come to trust him, and us.// 

Dayna spoke quickly, overriding Tarrant's protests. "I agree with Avon. I'd like to see their terms of contract." 

"They are good ones," said Avon. 

Cally sat down on the arm of Avon's chair. "Then I trust you accepted them," she purred, draping herself about his shoulders. "I knew that you would look after me, Avon." Feeling astonishment in the tension of Avon's muscles she added the telepathic rider, //Help me, Avon. I am not very good at this and I find it difficult enough without trying to make love to a stone. We have played this trick before. If they think I am your woman they will be less likely to see me as a threat. Help me.// 

Avon promptly pulled her even closer and kissed her hard, ignoring her, //I did not ask you to enjoy it quite so much!// 

They both became aware that Dayna was glaring at them, that Vila had an expression of comical surprise on his face, and that Tarrant's red-faced fury was deepening to crimson. 

Then, suddenly, Avon saw understanding dawn on Dayna's face, and guessed that Cally was explaining telepathically. 

"One thing, Avon," Dayna said. "When I take contract, Tarrant will be under my protection, not yours." 

"You can have him with pleasure." 

Tarrant began to gobble. Dayna, seeing that he had either not understood Cally's explanation or had been too angry to listen to it, and knowing that he was going to say something that they would all regret, leaped to her feet and flung herself into his arms, stopping his protests with a kiss. As he stopped struggling and started co-operating, Cally rushed in with a repeat of her telepathic explanation. 

"But Vila stays with me," Avon added, as Tarrant and Dayna drew apart. 

"Thanks," Vila said dryly. "Why?" 

"No-one else is going to have the pleasure of teaching you your rightful duties as a servant after all the trouble you've been to me in the past." 

"I think I'd rather be dead." 

"That can be arranged." Even as Avon spoke, his eyes met Vila's, and something about them reassured the thief. 

He gave a small grin. "You'll be sorry." 

"Probably." 

But Vila had relaxed and there was trust on his face as he watched Avon. 

_How am I going to get us out of this?_ Avon asked himself. Strangely, it did not occur to him that no-one had asked him to try. 

 

The Director's face shone with pleasure as she watched the screen. "So Avon was won over more easily than you expected, Van. He is going to be a great asset to us. Of course, if we had known about the sexual alliances from the start we could have used them, and I would not have suggested killing them as witnesses." 

"We didn't have that information," I pointed out. 

The Director waved a hand dismissively, "It's not important. This has been a totally successful pickup, Van. My congratulations. 

Even as I thanked her, I was not so sanguine about our success. I had seen Avon signal to Cally that they were being watched and no doubt she had passed on the message telepathically. I had, of course, deprogrammed the information that Cally was from Auron from the computers; Avon might need that advantage. In fact, it looked as if he was already taking it, plainly realising that surveillance was constant, and was trying to lull the observers into a false sense of security. His behaviour – and Cally's – was so out of character that, while I would normally have been quite willing to accept the idea that they were lovers, indeed had always hoped that their friendship might deepen into love, I was suspicious of this display of public affection. By inference, I suspected Tarrant and Dayna too, particularly as she had shown no special concern for him when I had spoken to her earlier. Together, they made me doubt that the contract offer had been truly accepted. 

So what was I going to do about it? I could protect them here at Scitech Central. If they left, the danger to them would increase immensely. I ought to speak to Avon alone... or ought I? Hadn't I interfered enough already? The more I saw of my friends, the more reluctant I became to reveal my presence. They seemed to have formed a team as close-knit and efficient as the one I had led, of which three of them had been a part, but now Avon was their leader and I could not intrude. After all, there was my oath to consider. 

I said, "I must go back to Firel, Director, then on to the Yards. I have neglected my work there for too long." 

"I thought that you wanted Avon to work with you?" 

"Yes, of course, but you've a lot of detail to sort out first. Also, I suggest that you obtain as much information as you can from Avon about _Liberator_ before he becomes too deeply involved in other projects to want to spend time reciting facts he already knows." 

"You may have a point there," the Director agreed. 

"I'll be back as soon as I can sort out the problem my wi'h have reported to me. You'd better make good use of your time." 

"We will... but Van, I think that you rely too much on the wi'h." 

"They are intelligent and totally obedient." 

"But without creativity - and they have no personal loyalties. Remember that, Van." 

'No personal loyalties.' I thought that over as I made my way out of the building towards the waiting groundcar. No personal loyalties. The Director was wrong, I knew. It wasn't true of the wi'h anymore than it had been true of Avon, despite his protests to the contrary. I wished that it was true of me. Then, perhaps, I would not be so confused, so tortured by guilt, by conflicting desires and emotions. No personal loyalties. It might be something to pray for, a way to find peace, yet I knew that it was a path I could never take. Perhaps I didn't really want to. I had given myself a breathing space, a time to think. I had to make good use of it.


	5. Cloud on the Wing

//Are we still under surveillance?// Cally asked Avon. He inclined his head slightly in affirmation. Cally crossed the luxurious room she and Avon had been given, to stand by the window, as if looking out at the incredible afternoon sky. //We cannot maintain this masquerade for very long.// 

"Come here," Avon ordered. 

Annoyed at his peremptory tone, Cally hesitated for a moment, then nonetheless obeyed. Avon slid a possessive arm around her waist, amused by the instinctive stiffening of her back muscles, and pulled her round, holding her closely against his side. His other hand flew at blinding speed across the keyboard of the computer terminal, with its familiar symbols glowing on the touch sensitive panel. 

Words formed on the inset screen on the desk surface. 

NOW YOU ARE BLOCKING THE SENSOR'S VIEW OF THE TERMINAL. I COULD GAIN CONTROL OF THE SURVEILLANCE SENSORS BUT THAT MIGHT BE REGARDED AS AN UNFRIENDLY ACT BY OUR HOSTS. 

Cally relaxed, leaning against him. //Then the situation is going to become very complicated.// 

IT WAS YOUR IDEA. 

//And I admit that it was not a good one. Do they leave the sensors on all night?// 

PROBABLY. THEY MAY WELL HAVE NIGHT VISION SETTINGS, TOO. 

The words on the screen might be impersonal, but there was laughter in Avon's eyes. 

//I do not suppose that our hosts would think that our insisting on privacy tonight was an unfriendly act.// 

SPOILSPORT. 

//Avon, it is not funny. Tarrant and Dayna are furious. I did not think that they would react so violently.// 

FORGET THEM. THEY'LL GET OVER IT. SO WILL VILA, WHO IS ALMOST SPEECHLESS WITH RAGE. 

//As he has a right to be. I know that it amuses you to provoke him, but I think that you should be more gentle with him.// 

"Oh, there you are," said Vila himself, barging in through the door and glaring at the sight of Avon's and Cally's intimate-seeming pose. "Good. The last thing I need right now is to be around Tarrant and Dayna." 

"What's wrong with them?" Avon asked, blanking the screen. 

"You—" Vila stopped as Cally's telepathic reminder flashed into his mind. "You... you think it's funny, turning us into servants, don't you?" 

Avon was making great efforts to keep a straight face. Anyone else might have believed that he really was indifferent, but Cally and Vila knew him far too well. 

Vila was well into his stride, with no intention of stopping. "Tarrant doesn't like being Dayna's servant any more than I like being yours." 

"I thought that he would enjoy serving her," said Avon, straight-faced. 

Vila looked at him very sharply indeed and Cally dug her thumb into a pressure point low on his back. It hurt. He made a mental note to see that she was paid back for it. 

"I bet you meant that exactly the way it sounded," Vila commented, with a grin. "I wouldn't say it to Tarrant, though, or Dayna. She packs a mean punch when she's roused." 

"Such insolence from a delta grade," Avon mocked him. "I don't see why you should complain about doing the work of the social class you were born into." 

"Oh, shut up." 

"I also see that I may have to teach you some manners," Avon threatened. 

"Teach yourself some, while you're about it," Tarrant spat from the doorway. 

"Oh, do come in," Avon drawled. "I trust that you have Dayna's permission to be here?" 

"He has." Dayna swept in behind him. 

Tarrant glared at them both, not sure if he disliked Avon's implication or Dayna's acceptance of it more strongly. 

//We are still being watched,// Cally warned them. 

"Hell!" Tarrant said to no-one in particular and went to the window. Where the devil was Ardron? He had promised to get them out of here... but when? He could not take this kow-towing to Avon and Dayna much longer, and he did not like the way he had been automatically tossed to Dayna while Avon had assumed ownership of Cally. In fact. there was a great deal that he didn't like. Well, things would change when they reached the Guild...

 

Scitech Central's huge spaceport seemed surprisingly quiet. I parked the groundcar and went through an almost deserted concourse towards the special security area where my shuttle had its launching bay. I was checked twice by unusually jumpy guards. The second was a man I knew slightly. 

"What's the problem, Haxby?" I asked him. 

He shrugged. "Just atmosphere, Ricel... and the fact that it's so quiet at the moment. That always makes everyone edgy, even if it does mean that the Guilders aren't around, causing trouble." 

I looked at him in surprise. "No Guild ships here?" 

"Only the one, sir. _Cloudstalker._ And she's lifting off in a few minutes. There were three due, but they've been delayed for various reasons. The first isn't due in for three hours now." 

"Well, at least I won't have any trouble getting takeoff clearance," I replied, making a mild joke of it. "See you sometime, Haxby." 

"And you, sir." 

The hatch of the specially adapted shuttle that I had christened _Moonshadow_ opened at my touch. It would have opened to no-one else, and any attempt to force it would have seen the ship exploding in flames. Outwardly, _Moonshadow_ was a typical Hoop shuttle – a dart-shaped craft about thirty metres long – but inside we had changed it to something never seen before in the Hoop. 

The first thing I heard as I came through the hatch was the beep of the communicator alarm. As I settled in the control seat, Jake Harun's image materialised beside me. "Van," he said, "thank the Builders I caught you. What's with this sudden desire to leave us holding the baby? No, never mind that now. You can relax about Chev's suspicions. The paranoid has found something else to chase: to wit, the Fraternity." 

"So they were responsible for the attack on Avon, Cally and Vila?" I was aware that the last name was a slip as soon as it was out of my mouth, but Jake didn't notice it. 

"That's still... problematical. Chev's mob used a process of elimination to track down the man who revived and freed the links. They'd narrowed it down to five technicians in Bio when one of the suspects vanished. One Bil Frolik, to be precise. Chev went looking for him, and found him too - or rather the Guild did. They called him into their enclave at the spaceport to pick up the body." 

"Body?" 

"Yeah, body. He had false papers and paid passage on a Guild ship, but before he could use them he was... well, there wasn't much left of him. And this is the problem, pal. It was a Fraternity killing. They'd taken a force knife and carved a slashed V on his chest. That's the mark they use when Valonia orders the execution of a traitor, Chev tells me. Anyone killed by the order of the local boss just gets the old symbol - an F in a circle." 

"That's crazy. Why would the Fraternity kill their own agent as a traitor? Because he failed?" 

"Would have been the case once, Chev says, but not since Valonia took over. 'Sides, that failure wouldn't make him a 'traitor'." 

"Confusing," I replied. "I wish Manster joy of it." 

"You know, you're an oddball, Van. This is your triumph. Aren't you going to stay for the kudos?" 

"I've got work to do. I'll be back soon enough." 

"Yeah, well, force fields are your speciality. I wish you joy of 'em." 

"Thanks for the information, Jake. Be seeing you." 

"Soon, pal, make it soon." 

As his image vanished and I turned back to the controls, I saw a large spaceship rise out of the freeport. That would, no doubt, be _Cloudstalker._

I started to run down of the check list.

 

Tarrant thought he must have been staring up at the sky forever, but he did not want to turn back to face the owners of the quiet voices murmuring behind him. How had Avon maintained his leadership? Or had he? Was it merely that the Scitech leadership wanted him? Well, when they were on board _Cloudstalker_... 

It was then that Tarrant noticed the cloud. It was high above the western horizon, large, black, spreading, moving with impossible speed and, seemingly, descending? 

The quiet voices were drowned by a more urgent, high pitched wailing, plainly electronic. Vila and Dayna covered their ears. 

The door of the room slid shut. Vila ran to try to open it. 

"Leave it," Avon ordered as he switched on the terminal screen. 

"Warning. Warning." The voice was synthetic and harsh. "A large minumal swarm is in the atmosphere of Scitech Central. All defence procedures are now in operation. Stay at your present location. All defence procedures now in operation. Warning. Warning. A large minumal swarm is in the atmosphere of Scitech Central..." As the message was plainly repeating, Avon turned off the speaker. 

"What's it talking about, Avon?" Vila asked nervously. 

"Look out here..." Tarrant whispered, awed. Three-quarters of the sky was darkened now, the setting sun blotted out by the expanding black cloud. As Cally, Vila and Dayna rushed to look out of the window, Avon addressed the computer. 

INSTRUCTION: COMMENCE VERBAL INFORMATION READOUT ON MINUMAL SWARM. 

"Minumal swarm," said the computer, in a voice more like that of the wi'h than a human. "The minumal are creatures native to the Hoop area of the Greater Magellanic Cloud. A fully grown specimen is half a metre long and three kilos in weight. When active, they fly in huge swarms by means of a natural jet-propulsion system located in the abdomen. When inactive, the minumal drift through space in cocoons excreted from glands in the outer tegument. These dissolve in an oxygen atmosphere. Minumal will eat anything that is organically based. A minumal swarm will cause vast damage to vegetation and they are extremely dangerous to all animal life, including human and wi'h. An extermination policy was introduced three hundred years ago. The adult minumal is susceptible to some chemical poisons and ultrasonics as well as more conventional methods of control. As no minumal has been seen in the Hoop for fifteen years, it can be assumed that the species is close to extinction. Despite this, full emergency protective measures remain in force on all the Hoop worlds. 

Even as the computer finished speaking, a heavy body thudded against the window, sending Vila leaping backwards with a yelp. For a moment, the rest of them stared into a sextet of red eyes, surrounded by billowing antennae, as long claws beat and scratched against the window. A circular mouth rasped at the transparent material, leaving tiny, clouded marks. It appeared that the creature did not like the taste, for suddenly it leaped away. 

"I wondered why a civilization as advanced as this used so much glass and concrete," Avon said mildly. "Of course, those materials are inorganic. Well, if anyone wanted to leave, I don't think they would be wise to follow that inclination for a while." 

 

As _Moonshadow_ slid into orbit above Scitech Central on the outer edge of the atmosphere, I looked down at the dark clouds swirling like ink in water, obscuring parts of the planet's surface. 

What the hell was happening? One moment, the sky into which _Moonshadow_ was rising had been clear indigo, red-lined by sunset and hung with Hoop planets, the next, it had been clouded by gyrating dark bodies. I had not waited to find out what they were, but had sent _Moonshadow_ up as if caught in an AG shaft. Now I was simply glad to be alive. 

But what about Avon and the others?

I toyed with the controls, wondering if it would be possible to dive down through the cloud of creatures to pick up my friends. 

Before I could make a decision, I realised that someone was calling me. 

I switched on the communicator. There was no image this time, just an urgent voice "—the Devil do you think you're doing, Ricel?" It was the voice of the Spaceport controller. "We're running a sweep on the swarm. Get down to three thousand metres and join up with the formation at co-ordinates 541: 396: 20. Do you copy, Ricel?" 

"Copied," I said. I still did not know what was going on, but it appeared that Scitech did not regard it as a unique occurrence, as I had thought it. To question orders would be to display my ignorance, so I had no alternative but to obey them. I turned _Moonshadow_ onto a new course towards the co-ordinates and began a slow dive through the atmosphere. 

Clouds swirled past, but they were white, composed of normal water droplets; reassuring, if it had not been for the thought of what they might hide. 

The sensors were a mass of light, showing what seemed like millions of tiny, moving objects in an almost solid mass below _Moonshadow_. Then I began to pick out other contacts. Ships. Shuttles like my own: short range Builders' ships, built for travel in the Hoop, just as the one I was flying used to be. 

"Van?" Jake's voice said from the communicator. "Didn't think you were the type to panic, pal, even if you are from outsystem." 

"I've never seen anything like this before," I admitted, swinging into place in the formation. 

"Hell, I haven't either... very few people have. That's a minumal swarm, Van. Nothing this size has been seen in the Hoop for over a hundred years. Now, get ready to sweep. Let's fry those bastards so that no-one sees them for another thousand, let alone a hundred, years."

 

"Jet propulsion systems are extremely rare in flying animals," Avon was telling Cally as they stood looking out into the maelstrom of whirling bodies beyond the windows. "Their metabolic rate must be phenomenal." 

"Who cares." Vila, sitting with his back to the window, kept stealing glances over his shoulder at the scene outside and shuddering in reflex reaction. 

"What's that?" Dayna asked, cocking her head. 

"What's what?" 

"I heard something." 

"Who can hear anything except that?" Vila retorted, jerking a thumb at the source of the muted bedlam. Automatically, everyone looked in that direction. 

So it was that they all saw the light approaching through the minumal murk. A quick flurry of glances were exchanged, then everyone began to back across the room, drawing together into a defensive group. 

The yellow light filled their vision, shadowy figures moving within it. 

The window exploded inwards, shattering into tiny, blunt-edged pieces, like solid raindrops. Three massive, silver-coated figures exploded in after them. 

Dayna, who was nearest, went into a fighting crouch. Cally moved to take guard on her flank. Vila looked about him wildly for a weapon. Avon grabbed his arm to pull him towards the locked door, then realised that the minumal were not, as he had feared, pouring in through the window opening. He, also, prepared to fight. 

"Wait!" Tarrant exclaimed. "They're friends." 

"Friends?" Vila howled, eyeing the wicked-looking weapons the intruders carried with a dubious expression. 

One of the figures pushed back the visor on his suit, thereby revealing himself as a grey haired human male. "These your crew, Tarrant?" he asked. 

"Yes. Ardron-" 

"Get these suits on." Ardron threw a bundle to Tarrant, who caught it by reflex. "We've got to lift off before the Hoopies clear out the minumal." 

Avon looked at the pack that landed at his own feet, then at Tarrant. 

"I met them at the spaceport," Tarrant explained, hurriedly and inaccurately. "They're going to get us out of here. Come on, Avon unless you want to spend the rest of your life cooped up at Scitech." 

Cally and Dayna were already opening the packs and drawing on the protective gear. Avon looked at the gun in Ardron's hands, then at his set face. He shrugged defeat and efficiently donned the suit. 

Vila, however was scared enough to be obdurate. "I'm not going outside in that!" 

The gun swung to point at him. "We can't afford to be connected with your disappearance," Ardron stated. "You either come with us, or you stay here - permanently." 

"Your presence here is already known," said Avon. "This room is under constant surveillance. I've no doubt that Scitech security is already moving in on the place." 

"Uhuh. No-one's going to be watching you in the middle of a minumal swarm. They've got more important things to do. Even if they could see you they'd never get through the swarm in time, because we're getting out of here now," said Ardron, his eyes and gun still threateningly on Vila. "Does he come with us or does he stay here?" 

Avon gave Vila a hard glare, then shrugged. "It's up to him." 

"He comes with us," said Cally, moving to help Vila who, panicked by the threat of the gun and Avon's apparent indifference, was fumbling as he hastily pulled on the protective suit. His handling of the fastenings was made even more clumsy by the frightened looks he kept casting at Ardron and at the dark, seething square of unprotected window. Again and again dozens of minumal bodies shot into the nimbus of light, only to sheer off at even greater speed, screaming their buzz-saw alarm calls. 

"Keep your visors closed," Ardron ordered. "The suit harnesses contain AG propulsors, tied into mine, but if you are more than ten metres from me, the minumal will attack. The suit will give you about thirty seconds protection, then you'll be eaten alive." 

"Ultrasonics," said Avon. 

"Right. Stay close to me and you'll be fine. Let's go." He stepped through the window opening, into space. 

Vila shrieked as he suddenly found that he had no control over his movements but he had not switched on his suit communicator, and no-one heard him. He fought unavailingly as the slaved AG unit dragged him forward and out after Ardron, the others beside him. 

They sailed into the swarm, the minumal gyrating about them like a black hailstorm driven by a tornado. As they climbed upwards, the minumal parted, seemingly in frantic haste to let them pass. 

Suddenly, the animals were gone, but still they climbed up into the night sky. Looking down, Vila could see not only the minumal swarm, but the flaring white glow of energy weapons. There were ships down there, fighting the swarm. 

They began to rise even faster as the atmosphere thinned and Vila soon lost sight of the battle. A shadow blotted out a section of stars. Gazing up at it, he finally made out the shape of a spaceship. Avon was mentally identifying it as an 'Ossian' class freighter, over a hundred years old, and slow. Tarrant identified it too, and felt the first stab of unease at the course he had chosen. Then he pushed it aside as light blazed in an opening airlock and they sailed gracefully through it, Vila stumbling as he hit the deck. 

After the airlock door closed behind them, Ardron waited thirty seconds for re-pressurisation to be completed, then pulled off his visor and hood and shook his hair back into place. He said, 'Welcome aboard the _Cloudstalker._ " 

Avon removed his own headgear. "The warmth of that welcome remains to be seen. Who are you, and what is this all about?" 

"I told you they were friends, Avon," Tarrant broke in. 

"Friends with guns." 

"This is Captain Ardron. I met him when I escaped, while you were talking to the Scitech Director. He promised to help us escape from the Hoop." 

Avon stepped forward until he was far too close for Ardron's comfort, his impassive face a threat in itself. "And your reason for doing so?" he questioned, softly, coldly. 

Ardron stepped sideways and spoke to Tarrant, ignoring Avon. "Your crew needs discipline, Tarrant." 

Avon's eyebrows shot up, but he held his peace. 

"Your cr-" Vila began. 

"None of us will-" 

Tarrant yelled, "Shut up!" at Vila and Dayna. 

//Follow Avon's lead,// Cally advised them. 

Avon said: "Crew? We no longer have a ship, Captain. We are free agents." 

"You are trained ship crew and therefore your place is with the Guild." Ardron stated this as if there could be no argument. "You should have been handed over to us immediately."

"I have heard of the agreement," said Avon. "Its application to some of us is problematical; however, you seem to have taken charge of the situation and we must accept that as a fait accompli." 

"Scitech was holding you prisoner!" 

"True. Perhaps we ought to be grateful for your rescue, though, I, personally, would have preferred a choice in the matter. I do not believe in altruism, Ardron. I made a simple enquiry as to the price of your intervention." 

Ardron suddenly chuckled. "Captain Tarrant didn't think to ask that. It's very simple, Avon. We want your help. The _Liberator_ is not unknown to us. We need that technology." 

"You could certainly use it," was Avon's comment, as he looked contemptuously about him. 

Ardron bristled. "What do you mean by that?" 

"Merely that your ship is a little out of date." 

"What can you expect when Scitech starves us of technology and technicians? We may get the ships, but Scitech never releases anyone who knows more than the rudiments of the principles on which they are built." 

"You could always try basic research," Avon suggested. 

"We need people to teach us how to start the basic research. That's why you're here." 

Avon nodded slowly. "I see. Meeting Tarrant was certainly a stroke of luck for you. So was the minumal attack." 

"Damn it, man, there was no luck about that. We've been collecting dormant minumal for decades. Every Guild ship trading with the Hoop has a store of thousands of them. There were a million in store at the Guild freeport at Scitech Central. We simply laid all of them in an orbit that would intercept with the planet at the moment and place we wanted. We knew that we'd have to distract the Hoopies, if we were going to free you - and we did." 

"I see," said Avon. 

Ardron caught hold of his temper. "I've been patient with you, Avon, because you are new to the Cloud. Now you must realise that you are under Guild orders. On this ship, that means under my authority. "Will you co-operate?" 

"I do not have any choice," said Avon. "This is your ship. I bow to your authority - and power. You have yet to prove your friendship but I am not antagonistic to seeing that proof." 

"Good." Ardron was plainly relieved. "I place you under Captain Tarrant's authority. Now, if you'd like to see your new quarters..."

 

It was late in the night when I finally set _Moonshadow_ down at the spaceport. The skies had been swept clean of minumal, and it had been an educational experience to watch the discipline of Manster's shuttle pilots and the skill with which they had broken the swarm and blasted it to ashes. Jake and I, along with other pilots of personal shuttles, had picked off the small pockets of survivors. I suspected that the extermination tactics on the ground had been just as efficient. 

The danger was over but I could not continue my journey to Firel until I was sure my friends were safe. I wanted to see them, to make sure of that one really important fact. 

It was then that I got my first shock: my call to the surveillance team was routed to Chev Manster. 

"They're dead," he said grimly. "Or gone." 

It was the two additional words that set me breathing again. 

"Gone?"

"Escaped. Kidnapped. If they escaped and the minumal got them, we'll find something. My teams are checking on it now." 

"But how could they have escaped?" I protested. "Jake told me that all the buildings on Scitech Central are sealed during a minumal attack." 

"They are, but the window of Avon's room was smashed from the outside. It could have been the weight of minumal on a faulty pane, of course, but I don't think so." 

"You don't think so? What about the surveillance? I know that you weren't recording but I thought a watch was being kept." 

"Think I can keep up routine surveillance during a minumal attack, Ricel?" Manster snarled. "No-one saw anything. There was no-one to see anything." 

Something else had occurred to me. "That room is five storeys up." 

"Five storeys. Correct," Manster replied. 

"I'm going to take a look." 

"Are you trying to do my job for me again, Ricel?" 

"I'm not usurping your authority, only trying to help," I told him, without much hope of being believed. "You have your hands full with the minumal, after all." 

"Mopping up operations only," Manster said, but he did sound slightly mollified. 

"This is all too damn coincidental'" I muttered. 

"Yes. Isn't it? Where were you at the time?" 

"Fighting minumal," I said, with satisfaction. "And that, Manster, you can check." 

"I will, Ricel. I will."

 

"Bit cramped after Scitech Central," Vila observed, bouncing up and down on one of the bunks in the tiny cabin. "Still, you can't grumble when you've got freedom, can you, Avon? Avon, what are you doing?" 

Avon said, "Ah. Got your tools, Vila?" 

"Huh?" 

"Your tools." 

"Avon, these are Scitech clothes, right? You've got no personal possessions yourself, right? Why should I have any tools?" 

Avon looked very hard at Vila: a careful, calculating look that made him uncomfortable. The thief sat up. "Why do you want my tools?" 

"Because I have had enough of being spied on." 

Vila suddenly decided not to ask any more questions. He got to his feet, and the cabin was so small that that meant that he was standing up against Avon. Suddenly, Avon felt something hard being pressed into his hands. He nodded thanks at Vila, then proceeded to climb onto the room's single chair and examine the light fitting. 

"You be careful with that," Vila warned him, as Avon probed inside the fitment. "Too much feedback current and you'll short it out. Short yourself out too. Oh, I see. Scanner eye." He lay on his back on the bunk and watched Avon work. 

"Yes, and an ear. Not very sophisticated. I've disconnected them. Where did you get this probe, Vila? 

"Had to replace my tools, didn't I? They're very careless with their tools on this ship. Not surprising, really, when you consider the quality..."

"Thieves can't complain." 

"You do," Vila retorted smugly. 

"Check out the rest of the room." 

"We don't have to worry about anything this primitive, do we?" 

"We don't take anything for granted. Check it out." 

"Okay, okay." Vila rolled off the bunk and began a careful search. Avon replaced the parts of the outer casing of the light fitting and jumped down from the chair. He was regarding the sensors in his hand with distaste when the door slid open and Dayna appeared. 

"Can we come in?" 

"You'd better," said Avon. "Well, Vila?" 

"As clean as a list of Servalan's good deeds," said Vila. 

By this time Dayna and Cally were in the room, which was suddenly very crowded indeed. Avon withdrew to the bunk. 

"What's going on?" Dayna asked. 

"The place was infested," Vila explained. "We had a debugging session." 

"So now we can talk freely," said Avon. "The main question is: are we better or worse off than we were before?" 

"Frying pan and firewise, you mean?" Vila asked. "We're free now - or so Tarrant says." His voice dripped irony. 

"So Tarrant says," Avon repeated, his irony drowning out Vila's. "I do not, however, see any material change in our circumstances, save that our quarters are somewhat more cramped, and that our escape must now be from a ship in space rather than from a planet with a spaceport." 

There was a long silence, then Cally said, "You do not trust Ardron?" 

"I do not trust anyone. I am not quite as gullible as Tarrant." 

"If you think we can't trust them, why didn't you resist down at Scitech Central? We were only waiting for your lead," Dayna challenged. 

"Between the minumal and the guns I did not think that we had any chance of a successful resistance. Or of survival, if we had tried." 

"But why do you think that we should not trust Ardron?" Cally persisted. 

"The political situation here in the Cloud is plainly complex and, equally plainly, our knowledge of _Liberator's_ technology is a valuable card in this particular game. Our problem is that, while both Scitech and the Guild appear to want that knowledge, they appear to regard it as equally important that the other party does not have it. And they are willing to kill us to ensure that. Certainly, we are important to the Guild. This operation to kidnap us was large and well organised. They had collected the minumal for years for some undefined purpose but decided to expend them on creating a diversion so that we could be taken." 

"And they would certainly have killed us if we had not accompanied them," said Cally "Yes, you are right, Avon. What should we do now?" 

"For now, nothing. Go along with Ardron. Collect all the information we can and be ready to act when the opportunity arises, either to take this ship or escape from it." 

"Escape to where?" Vila asked gloomily. 

"That is another problem. Where is Tarrant, by the way?" 

"Gone up to the flight deck with Ardron." 

"Good. The more he discovers about flying this ship, the better. Meanwhile, I suggest that the rest of us get some sleep." 

"Well, at least Ardron doesn't think you and Cally have paired up," Dayna said, tartly "and I won't have to share Tarrant's cabin." 

"Ah, but as 'Captain' he's entitled to sleep alone," said Avon. 

"He snores," Vila observed. "Do you snore, Avon?" 

"I don't know, but I do know what will happen to you, if you do." 

"Let's leave them to it," Cally suggested to Dayna. "They aren't happy unless they're fighting, anyway." 

"Careful what you say to each other unless you remove the scanner," Avon warned. 

"We will. I don't like peeping Toms," Dayna said sweetly. 

"Here, take this." Avon tossed her the probe. 

"Hey!" Vila yelped. "That's mine!" 

"Steal another." 

"He will, if it isn't chained down." Dayna grinned. Her head disappeared just before Vila threw the pillow. 

 

Tarrant looked about him, trying to conceal his disgust behind an admiring expression. The flight deck of the _Cloudstalker_ , though well-kept, indeed shining, seemed to have been designed in the Stone Age, especially when compared to _Liberator_. He peered at the navigation station, failing to make sense of the ever-changing star charts. "Where are we going?" he asked Ardron. 

"To Shipmeet. Fleet Admiral Gorsky is most anxious to see you." 

"Shipmeet?" Tarrant questioned. 

"You'll see it soon enough." 

"Are there shipyards there?" 

"And where would we get the technology to build shipyards?" Ardron snapped. "We can't even repair the ships we have without Scitech assistance." 

"It's only that... it occurred to me that it's going to be difficult for you to put what we can tell you about _Liberator_ technology into practice." 

"Leave that to us," said Ardron, "There are certainly things you could tell us that will help us now. As for the rest, well, I'm not a policy-maker, but I suppose we can make our own alliance with one of the planetary governments to get the raw materials we'll need. They don't like Scitech any more than we do." 

It seemed to Tarrant that this argument was a little vague but he decided not to question Ardron further. That might be impolitic at that stage of the proceedings. After all, he was deeply in the Captain's debt. "Are we clear of the Hoop system?" he asked instead. 

"Yes, We're clear of the detectors. We'll be going FTL in forty minutes. We're following our original flight plan - better not draw attention to ourselves. Scitech may suspect that the Guild was responsible for your disappearance but they can't act without proof. They're too scared of what we might do to them. So we'll skirt the Hinkal system and the Mare's Nest, as we planned. Once we're beyond that, no-one can see which way we're going... no matter what Builder gimmickry Scitech is hiding from us. Oh... you wouldn't know. The Mare's Nest is a dust cloud with some odd properties. It blocks every kind of energy, and it's deadly to spacecraft." 

"And the pirates use it as cover..." The mutter was very low, but it was there. 

Ardron whirled on the speaker. "No Guild ships need fear Inde pirates!" he snarled at the hapless man. 

"Who are these pirates?" Tarrant asked. 

"Scum." Ardron bit off the word. "Ramshackle spaceships carrying illegal cargoes. The Mare's Nest is dangerous. They hide in its skirts, knowing no Guild ship will come after them there." 

Tarrant said no more on the subject, but he did wonder what kind of ship could be called 'ramshackle' when compared with _Cloudstalker._

 

The room was shredded. Apart from the shattered window, everything organic had been devoured by the minumal. Even the computer terminal casing had been chewed away and the insulation stripped out. 

I stepped over the framework of a chair and a heap of minumal corpses to claim the attention of a security officer and ask if any trace of Avon or the others had been found. The reply was firmly negative, but a technician working in the remains of the computer terminal looked up and said, "What about the remains your people found outside the building?" 

The security officer flushed. "They only found the remains of one being," he snapped, "and that could be either wi'h or human." He looked hard at me and added, "Security Chief Manster is checking on it now." 

"I'll go down and have a word with him," I said, though I did not look forward to another confrontation with Manster. "Where was the body found?" 

"No body. Not after minumal had been at it. Round the right hand side of the building, on the pathway." 

"Thanks." 

As I fell smoothly down the AG shaft, I wondered just what stunt Avon had pulled and why. Once, I would have been able to follow his logic but, judging by this, I no longer knew him at all. Damn. I should have found some way to talk to him... Would that have done any good at all? Would anything? Too late... I was always too late. Where was he now? Where were Vila and Cally? Why had they gone where I could no longer protect them? 

My feet jolted as I hit ground level. I stepped out into the night... no, pre-dawn now, for the eastern horizon was threaded with grey. I turned into the darkness on the western side of the building and followed the curving pathway towards a pool of light, crunching through piles of brittle minumal bodies. Spotlights, floating just above head level, were focused on a technician and a pair of analysis robots which were carefully checking the area, millimetre by millimetre. Manster stood watching them, arms folded. 

"Chev?" I asked. 

He started, then looked at me. "Oh, it's you." 

"What have you found?" 

He obviously considered telling me to go to hell but, knowing I would invoke the Director's authority, conceded the point. "Something was eaten by minumal here. Might be human. Might be wi'h. The boots say it was humanoid. There was no jewellery that we've found so far, and that points to wi'h..." 

At that moment, one of the analysis robots began to beep. The technician went to examine it. Seconds later, she approached Manster. "Sir... it was carrying this." 

Manster took the small, bronze coloured cylinder that she offered him. 

"A message capsule," said the technician, unnecessarily. She made no attempt to leave. "Probably identikeyed," she suggested, as Manster turned it over in his fingers, then handed it to me. It felt cold and I could see no way to open it. For all I could tell, it was solid metal. 

Manster looked disappointed. I think he had hoped that it was identikeyed to me. I closed my fingers around it and asked the technician, "Can we open it?" 

"The computers should be able to crack it." 

"Get on with your work!" Manster snarled, unable to bear her intrusion any longer. 

I smiled at her and at him. "Let's get to work on opening this. It may give us a clue as to where the _Liberator's_ crew could have been taken." 

"Taken?" 

"Of course," I said glibly. "Avon had everything to gain and nothing to lose by staying at Scitech and he was well aware of the fact. The window of his room was violently broken from the outside. There is an obvious conclusion: _Liberator's_ crew were abducted." I was by no means sure of this 'fact' but I wasn't going to put my friends in danger from Scitech by letting that organisation think that they had absconded, even if they had. 

Manster's expression was not as sceptical as it was annoyed, but he could see no immediate refutation of my arguments, and no way to keep me from seeing the message capsule opened. With a last glare at the technician, he stamped off, knowing I would follow. I did.

 

Tarrant opened the door of his cabin, only to find that it was not empty as he had expected. Avon was sitting in a chair waiting for him. 

"What are you doing here?" he demanded 

"Waiting to see you. Don't worry, Tarrant. I've disconnected the sensors." 

"Sensors?" Tarrant asked stupidly. He was too tired to cope with this and he found dealing Avon difficult at any time. 

"We're just as much under surveillance here as we were at Scitech Central," Avon explained. "How much did you learn from Ardron?" 

"Huh? What am I supposed to have learnt?" 

"How about what they really want from us?" 

"Ardron told you, our help to improve their fleet." 

"Don't tell me that you actually bought that, Tarrant? According to the Scitech Director, they do not have a planetary base, and the Cloud Worlds hate them too much to provide them with one. They don't have qualified engineers or technicians who can build the machines to build the machines to build starships. They know it just as well as we know it. So what do they really want?" 

Tarrant counter-attacked. "I'm wise to you, Avon. You just wanted to stay at Scitech where you'd be important..." 

"And where we had a better chance of finding some way to return home or of manufacturing ourselves a rather more efficient spaceship than the one we're standing in." 

"We need allies, Avon," Tarrant pointed out. "I'd rather we found those allies among people who haven't tried to make me a slave." 

"Yet," said Avon. 

Tarrant glared at him. "Listen, I got us out of Scitech-" 

"Before we were ready to go." 

"Ah, if you'd arranged our escape we would have been ready to go, right? Make ourselves a ship? We had a ship, Avon. Remember?" 

"I do not want an argument, Tarrant. I'm too tired. All I'm telling you to do is to be careful about what you tell Ardron. Don't reveal anything of importance." 

"You're _telling_ me?" 

Avon closed his eyes, wondering where he had gone wrong now. Tarrant seemed determined to cause a confrontation, and Avon longed for Blake's skill in avoiding it. Some hope. "Have you a better suggestion?" he asked. 

"Yes. Co-operate with the Guild." 

"As you co-operated with Servalan to give her _Liberator?_ " 

"You got us into a situation where there was nothing else I could do to save our lives," Tarrant retorted. "I've told you before, Avon. I don't take orders from you. And I win. I make a habit of it." 

Avon got to his feet. "None of us will win if you give away what little advantage we have," he replied. "You might remember that." 

There was a bad taste in Tarrant's mouth as he watched Avon leave. He remembered Ardron's questions and his all-too-free answers. Though he told himself that his own questions had been answered fully, he did not sleep well, despite his tiredness.

 

It was a long wait. The Scitech Central computers were creations of the Builders and in advance of human technology both in our galaxy and in the Cloud but even they took time to analyse the message capsule and synthesise the characteristics needed to open it, so I found myself with plenty of time to think. 

Could this message have been meant for a member of _Liberator's crew?_ If so, whoever carried it must have had the personal characteristics or code that would open it, for no-one in the Cloud except myself knew enough about Avon, Cally or Vila to key it to open to one of them, and no-one at all knew that much about Dayna or Tarrant. 

I paced the room. Manster sat quietly and fumed so hard that I expected to see smoke coming out of his ears... 

Finally, the 'ready' signal flashed up on the terminal screen. The capsule clicked open and the message unrolled. It was hand-written in a clear, bold, but very neat script. 

It said: 

_Do not trust anyone involved with Scitech or the Guild. Be very careful. They will kill you if you cross them. This messenger has been instructed what to do next. You are now under the protection of the Fraternity. I will explain everything when we meet._

It was signed by Valonia, the head of the Fraternity, of whom even I had heard, and the signature was followed by a small sigil or initial, difficult to make out. It appeared to be a triangle crossed by two horizontal lines, one at the apex and one across the centre. 

I only just had time to take this in before the film on which the words were written dissolved away. 

"Recorded?" Manster asked. 

"Recorded," said the computer. 

"Valonia," said Manster. "The head of the Fraternity herself, sending a personal message - to who?" 

"A Fraternity member within Scitech?" I suggested, not very hopefully. 

"No," said Manster. 

I left him to think about it and made my way back to the spaceport in the sleepy morning. The gentle light revealed a city stripped bare of every living thing. The gardens that had made Central beautiful had been eaten to bare ground, and the cultivated land around the spaceport had been reduced to lifeless dirt. 

The Fraternity. It was a force to be reckoned with. Criminals had come to the Hoop in the same way that other humans had and, like the scientists and technologists in Scitech and the spacecraft personnel in the Guild, they had banded together in self-help and self-protection. So the Fraternity had been born. At first it had been little more than a method by which big crooks had preyed on smaller ones, then Valonia had taken over. Now, members of the Fraternity travelled freely on her business, because the Guild was frightened of her power. The Cloud Worlds shielded her personnel for the same reason, and Scitech... 

I had to find out more about the Fraternity. That message had been aimed at one or more of _Liberator's_ crew. What had caused this sudden change in policy? A Fraternity agent had released the links to try and kill Avon, Cally, and Vila. Then that agent had been executed as a traitor. Now, the Fraternity was offering protection to its erstwhile victims. Surely Valonia was not stupid enough to expect them to take her on faith? Avon certainly would not. It didn't make sense. Nor did the fact that the message had never been delivered. And how had Avon and the others escaped? Had they been taken by the Fraternity? Or someone else? 

Whichever way I looked at it it still did not make any sense at all.


	6. Stalking Horse

"Well, well," said Vila, as Tarrant came into the mess area on the _Cloudstalker_ some fifteen hours after the ship had cleared the Hoop, "if it isn't Del Tarrant, captain of _Liberator._ " 

"Shut up, Vila." 

"What are you going to do if I don't?" Vila enquired, with feigned interest. "Looks a bit odd, doesn't it? A captain whose crew won't follow his orders? 

"I suppose that you thought _Liberator_ was yours?" 

"Actually," said Vila, in suddenly factual tones, "it was Avon's. Blake said that he could have _Liberator_ you see, after we'd destroyed Star One." 

"Now, wait a minute..." 

"It's the truth. You can ask Cally." Vila busied himself stuffing his mouth full of hot food. 

"And you were just going to accept that?" 

"Didn't have much choice," mumbled Vila through the food. "Safer with Avon than with anyone else 'cept Blake. Didn't know where he'd gone. Avon seemed happy enough to have me stay." 

"He says a good thief is useful." 

Vila nodded. "Like a good pilot. He'll put up with anyone if he really needs the skill." 

His lack of concern annoyed Tarrant and it occurred to him that he was not getting the best of this conversation. He said, "We aren't on _Liberator_ now." 

"True. Avon still needs a good thief, though. Wonder if he still needs a pilot?" He grinned maliciously. "I've always found that when we get into trouble the safest place to be standing is behind Avon. That's where I intend standing for the rest of this trip - behind Avon." 

"But you don't like him." Tarrant had never been able to comprehend the complexity of Vila's relationship with Avon. 

Vila grinned. "Of course not, but it's still the safest place." 

"Even after Terminal?" 

Vila's expression suddenly changed. His face and voice were cold as he said, "You wouldn't understand." 

"Damn it, Vila-" 

"I got to thinking," Vila went on, "cooped up alone in the Medical Centre back at Scitech Central with not much except the odd alien for company..." 

"That must have been a novel experience - thinking, I mean." 

"...and I came to the conclusion that when Avon tells me to do something and I do it, nine times out of ten it turns out to be right. When you tell me to do something and I do it, I get into bad trouble. Like when your 'friendly natives' turned out to be Bayban the Butcher and-" 

"You've never forgiven me for that, have you, Vila? You've got to learn to be more trusting..." 

Vila shook his head. "Avon's right. You can't trust anyone." 

"You trust him." 

"I trust him to save his own neck. If I stay close, he'll probably save mine while he's at it." 

Tarrant forced a saccharine smile. "Don't worry, Vila. I'll see that you don't get hurt." 

"I'd rather you didn't," said Vila. "People you 'help' have a habit of ending up injured, a prisoner, or dead." He pushed his plate aside and got to his feet. "See you later, 'Captain'." He walked out without looking back. 

Tarrant was silent. He had not expected opposition from Vila. Damn them all, anyway. Why didn't they react the way he'd been taught that crewmen would in the lectures on command at the Federation Space Academy? His appetite suddenly gone, he barged out after Vila and almost ran down Dayna, 

"Heeey!" She pushed him back. "Look where you're going." She paused, peering at him more closely. "Why the sour face?" 

"I suppose you're like Vila; you think Avon's always right and I'm always wrong." 

"Avon does tend to be a little less impulsive than you," Dayna replied. "That means he doesn't make as many mistakes as you do, or as I do, come to that." 

Tarrant began to feel better. "That's true. He's the original cold fish." 

"And I've known him be wrong." 

"So have I." Tarrant definitely did feel better. 

"Mind you, I've known you to be wrong too." She gave him a faint, ironical smile. "Sometimes." She hesitated, the smile dying. "He's a dangerous man to cross." 

"So am I," Tarrant said smugly. Then, "Vila isn't exactly renowned for his judgement." 

Dayna wasn't so sure. She could not help remembering the strength and courage and cool good judgement that Vila had shown as _Liberator_ disintegrated about them in orbit above Terminal. "He's better than he was," she said. 

"Which isn't saying much," 

They both laughed. 

"Let's go up to the flight deck," Tarrant suggested, his good humour restored. 

"Good idea." Dayna linked her arm through his. "You must introduce me properly to Ardron. We hardly got to say two words to each other yesterday." 

"I will - but why this sudden interest?" 

"Just an idea," said Dayna. Indeed, that was all she would say on the subject all the way to the flight deck. 

 

_Moonshadow's_ cabin was comforting in its familiarity. The glowing cube that I took from its case had another kind of familiarity. A lot of artefacts from Terminal had been taken to the _Moonshadow_ on my instructions, but only this was important. 

Orac. 

I put the key - which I'd found on the cruiser and kept carefully concealed from Scitech - into position. The glow brightened and the cube began to tick. 

"Hello, Orac," I said. "Remember me?" 

There was a moment's pause. I do believe that, for the very first time in his existence, Orac was startled. 

"I see that, as usual, I have been supplied with inaccurate information," he said. "Avon told me that you were dead." 

"So I am, back in our home galaxy. So is Avon, now. Perhaps even you could be considered 'dead' there, Orac." 

"Yes," Orac said, at last. "I see now. This is extraordinary. Some of the computers here I can only... touch. Others repel me, but some I can read." 

"Good." 

"This is fascinating. The situation here..." 

"Never mind that now. I've got to find Avon, Cally and Vila." 

"Have you lost them?" 

"Yes." 

"That was careless." 

I looked up at the hull over my head in despair. I had forgotten just how exasperating Orac could be. "Listen, Orac..." 

"The computers here in the Hoop are certainly worthy of further study..." 

"But not now. I'm going to brief you on what's been happening here recently. That's also worthy of further study. While I'm doing that, I want you to start a search of all the Cloud computers you can read to trace the whereabouts of _Liberator's_ crew." As I had been speaking, I had been setting the controls. Now I engaged _Moonshadow's_ AG generators to lift her from her pad and up into space. 

"Where are we going?" Orac asked. 

"Home, for the moment." I said. "Now, the situation is this. About nine hundred years ago, the alien race who built the Hoop left this system..." 

 

Tarrant had to admit to himself that Dayna had been doing a spectacular job of charming _Cloudstalker's_ crew. For someone who had spent most of her early life in total isolation, she showed surprising skill in human relationships. It must be natural talent. Tarrant thought smugly that he was not so bad at that himself, unlike Avon. 

Dayna, meanwhile, was leaning over the navigator's shoulder and asking him about the system they were just skirting. 

"The primary's called Teller. Eight planets. The only one colonised is the fourth, Hinkal." 

"What's this contact? The one extending almost to the edges of the Teller system? It must be a couple of parsecs in extent." 

"Not much more than one. You're misjudging the size because it's a powerful transmission source. It's a dust cloud: the Mare's Nest." 

"A dust cloud shouldn't be that powerful a transmission source, unless..." 

"Unless there's something inside it; a neutron star or a small Black Hole or something else we don't know about. There's certainly something in there. No ship that has gone more than eight thousand spacials into the Mare's Nest has ever come out again." 

Dayna smiled dazzlingly at him. "I take it we're not going in?" 

"No. We're just going to use the Mare's Nest to make sure we're off Hoopie screens." He saw her puzzlement, and explained. "Scitech. They can detect us, even out here. Not that they can do anything about what they detect, but we don't want to give them any clues about the location of Shipmeet, just in case they do ever get their hands on some kind of ship or long range weapon that could-" He stopped, wondering if he had said too much. 

No, these people were on the side of the Guild. That was why Ardron had allowed them freedom of the ship... Or was it? 

Disturbed, he drew Dayna's attention to the main screen and the swirling, vivid but veiled brightness, glowing pinkly there. "That's the Mare's Nest - on telescopic." 

Dayna watched, fascinated, then turned her attention back to the sensors. In the nebulous brightness at the fringes of the dust cloud a few brighter specks were glowing. 

"What are these?" she asked, circling them with her finger. "Meteorites?" 

"Probably... but..." 

"They're ships," Dayna said with sudden certainty. "That one is changing course slightly. Look," 

"No, it can't be..." 

Ardron appeared behind them. "Where?" 

"Here." 

"Pirates!" the navigator hissed. 

"Sound red alert!" Ardron ordered. "All crew to battle stations. Pilot, change vectors. Come to 419 603 7491. Full emergency power. Rig all systems to withstand attack." 

Tarrant was also watching the screens, seeing the Mare's Nest swing behind them as _Cloudstalker_ looped backwards to take up her new course. "Aren't you going to make a fight of it?" he asked, as he saw the smaller ships begin to follow. 

"Can't risk it," Ardron replied grimly. 

_Cloudstalker_ was now fleeing back towards the Teller system, with the pack of smaller ships rampaging out of the edges of the Mare's Nest after her. 

"They're closing," the navigator reported. 

"Report on weaponry?" 

"All weapon stations primed and ready to fire, sir." 

"I thought you said that no Guild ship had anything to fear from the pirates..." Ardron's replying glare was so ferocious that Tarrant shut up. 

Fire lanced from the nose of the leading pirate ship. It struck _Cloudstalker_ in the stern, to the left of the engine pods, and glanced off the shielding. On the flight deck, the impact was felt as a tremor under their feet. 

"One strike. Shields... holding." 

"Return fire." 

Red lines blinked against the stars as the stern lasers targeted the leading pirate ship. It exploded, a single white flash against the dark, gone equally suddenly. Instantly, the pirate formation starbursted, going over, under and to either side of _Cloudstalker's_ track. Another shot ripped home on the fleeing Guild craft, and she lurched and slid off course for an instant before the pilot regained control. 

"Where are we going?" Dayna asked. 

"Hinkal. Once we get under their defence screen the pirates will veer off." 

"Hinkal will protect you?" 

"They're too dependent on the Guild not to-" Ardron's reply was cut off by the sound of a heavy explosion aft. 

"Sir, the pirate ships are trying to contact us. They want us to surrender and to hand over our prisoners?" 

"Tell them to go to hell!" Ardron roared. "Take all-out evasive action, on a general course towards Hinkal." 

 

Avon ran through the door of the cabin he was sharing with Vila and hauled him unceremoniously from the bed, where he had been curled up with a pillow over his head. 

"But we're under attack." Vila protested. 

"You noticed?" Avon commented, clinging to the door frame as the ship rolled under him. 

"There's nothing we can do, Avon." 

"Not to save this junk heap. She's in the process of falling apart, but I do not intend to be on board when she does. Come on." 

Still grumbling, Vila followed Avon out into the corridor just in time to see Cally come running towards them. She had a gun. Vila wasn't about to ask her how she'd got it. 

"It's clear down there," she reported. "Everyone's at Battle Stations." 

"Good. Where are Tarrant and Dayna?" 

"Dayna said that she was going up to the flight deck to try and pick up some information." 

"I think Tarrant went with her," said Vila. "At least, I passed her as I came out of the Mess and I heard her talking to him as I left." 

"Well, it's the last place we want to be. Cally, call them by telepathy. Tell them to get out of there and meet us in the main cargo hold by the escape rockets." 

"How do you know that's where the escape rockets are?" Vila wanted to know, as Cally concentrated on delivering her message. 

"I asked." 

"Didn't they want to know why?" 

"I told them we needed an escape route." 

"But-" 

"And I can be very persuasive." He looked at Cally, who said: 

"It's done." 

"Then let's get the hell out of here." He set off at a run, Cally at his heels. 

"How did I get into this?" Vila moaned, and followed them. "We're going to make it..." Ardron whispered, more as an article of faith than in true belief, yet Tarrant thought that he might be right. The attacking ships seemed to be firing to disable, not to destroy and, though the strikes on _Cloudstalker_ were now almost continuous, the Guild ship was not badly damaged. 

"Shields now down to forty per cent power..." 

"We have fluctuations of power flow on the port engines..." 

"Hold speed at maximum," Ardron commanded. "We have to get to Hinkal." 

//Dayna, Tarrant.// The mental voice was soft but clear. //We are going to abandon ship. Join us in the main cargo hold, at the escape rockets. Immediately. Take care.// 

As the voice ceased, Tarrant realised that Dayna's eyes were fixed on him. She touched her lips with her fingers, nodded at him, then began to back slowly towards the door. Plainly, the idea of disobeying had not entered her head. It had certainly entered Tarrant's, but he did follow her through the haze of smoke that was now drifting across the flight deck. He caught up with her just outside the door. 

"Do you really think we ought?" he began. 

"Let's get out of here... or do you really want to be destroyed along with the ship?" 

Even as Dayna spoke there was a tremendous jolt followed by a giant detonation. Behind them, light blazed from the flight deck. 

"Down!" Tarrant yelled. 

As they fell to the floor, the shock wave steamrollered them down onto it and their heads rang with the bellow of the explosion until they could no longer think or feel. Avon paused at the entrance to the hold, signalling with an upraised hand to Cally and Vila to remain behind him and to keep silence. He was consumed by the need for haste. There had been too many hits on _Cloudstalker_ and only a few seconds ago there had been a secondary explosion that had shaken the forward area of the ship. He hoped Dayna and Tarrant had left the flight deck in time. 

Peering out into the hold, he absorbed tactical detail almost without realising he was doing so. Most of the huge room was packed with cargo, all of it tightly secured in position, but to his right the hull bulged inwards, and a trio of hatches proclaimed the existence of the escape rockets behind them. 

There were people in the hold. In the distance, Avon could see a damage control party working on an emergency seal. More importantly, two armed guards stood beside the escape rocket hatches. 

Avon grimaced. Plainly, no-one was going to be allowed to abandon ship until Ardron gave the order to do so. He glanced back along the corridor. Still no sign of Dayna and Tarrant. Well, if they didn't arrive soon then they would be left behind. 

Problem: how to get rid of those guards? He or Cally could use the gun to shoot one of them, but the alarm would be raised by the noise, even if they could kill the other before he could get under cover. No good. Some other way, then. 

He beckoned Cally to his side. Silent as a wraith, she joined him. 

"Cover me," he ordered. "Vila can watch our rear." 

//Good luck.// 

Unarmed, Avon walked forward into the hold, making his way boldly towards the escape rockets. When the guards noticed him, he smiled at them and waved in a friendly fashion, then turned his back on them, surveying the hold with tourist-like interest, knowing that this would puzzle the guards without alarming them, 

A deep rumble of fury from his left startled him considerably, almost breaking his poise. He looked for the source and his eyes were caught by another pair the colour of deep water, set in a snarling, not-quite-feline face. Huge silvery fangs were bared in threat. It was all Avon could do to stop himself taking a step backwards, despite the presence of a heavily reinforced cage wall between himself and the creature. 

It was big. One and a half metres at the shoulder and probably ten times the weight of a man, it had thick, silvery-white fur, shading to sky and midnight blue, so that it seemed to shimmer into ghostly insubstantiality. The body was strong and lithe beneath the fur, with long, powerful legs, ending in heavy, six-clawed paws. Avon noticed that two of the claws faced rearwards and were independently retractable. The tail was long and bushy, at this moment held out low and straight behind the beast, as if to balance it when it sprang. The head containing those fabulous eyes was large and domed, but slightly pointed, eyes to the front, the ears large, triangular, and set on the sides of the head. Their tips carried high tufts of deep blue hair, plumes standing over the piercing eyes. 

It looked irritated - and dangerous. As the ship vibrated in another explosion, the rumble became thunderous. The unsheathed foreclaws tore angrily at their owner's prison, sharp enough to scratch the clear carlymer. Avon was very glad to be on the outside of the cage. The beast looked ready to kill. 

"Hey!" The shout came from behind Avon, from one of the guards on the escape rockets. "Leave it alone!" 

It occurred to Avon that he might be able use the creature. If he could separate the guards... He moved towards the cage, beginning to circle it. The captive beast followed his every move, as if waiting for a chance to attack. 

"Hey, you!" One of the guards left his post and hurried across the hold, gun swinging from his hand. "Stop annoying the icecat. That's supposed to be delivered in prime condition to the King of Toppon." 

"Why?" Avon asked, moving further away, round the back of the cage. He was trying to give a fair imitation of an idiot at a zoo. ( _Act like Vila_ , he told himself.) 

"Why? Because icecats are the most dangerous big game there is and His Majesty wants to hunt one, that's why. How the planetbound spend their credit with Scitech and the Guild is their business." The guard was now only a couple of metres from Avon, behind the cage, hidden from his partner. "And what the devil do you think you're doing?" 

Avon managed a foolish laugh. Oddly, his main regret was that Vila was probably observing his idiotic antics with some glee. "Hey, he's almost cross-eyed, isn't he?" He waved at the icecat. As he had expected, the beast reacted instantly, crashing into the side of the cage with a bellow of fury. 

The guard would not have been human if he had not glanced towards that clear, reinforced wall, simply to make sure it had not given under the impact. 

In that split second of inattention, Avon struck. A fist in the man's stomach, then a downward chop on the base of his neck, retrieving the gun even as the unconscious guard toppled to the ground. 

He'd hardly closed his fingers round the butt when a great blast set the ship rolling, the momentum sending everything flying across the floor and through the air. The power failed, the gravity with it. Avon lost contact with the floor, lost contact with reality as the lights went out and all sound was drowned in the explosion. Then the secondary generators came on line, and with them light and gravity returned. Avon's right shoulder jarred on impact with the deck, then again and again as he rolled frantically away from the cargo crates sliding towards him, torn loose in the shock, 

Then all was still. Too still. The engine vibration had ceased. 

Avon climbed painfully to his feet. The icecat's cage had torn away one set of securing bolts, been shifted sideways and tilted heavily. A corner had been crushed by a crate containing heavy machinery. The beast was clawing furiously at the split and shattered gap in the carlymer, but it was too small for the big and powerful body to force its way through. 

The second guard was coming towards him at a run. Avon thought about the gun, remembered the damage control party, and shouted instead. "Over here! Help me! He's been hurt!" 

The guard spurted forward. Avon pointed towards the cage, but stuck out his foot just as the guard passed him. The man gave a yelp of surprise as he fell, which cut off abruptly as Avon himself dropped to his knees and used linked hands to club him into unconsciousness. 

"You need any help over there?" The shout came from the direction of the damage control party. 

"No, thanks!" Avon yelled back. "All under control." 

By this time, Cally and Vila were racing to join him, catching hold of whatever equipment was still secure to steady themselves as the ship swayed and shuddered under the battering from the attacking pirate ships. 

"Into the escape rocket," Avon ordered, "and let us hope it is in working order." 

"What about Tarrant and Dayna?" Vila queried.

 

Dayna and Tarrant raised their hands cautiously. Both were bruised and shaken. Dayna got to her feet swiftly, ignoring Tarrant's offer of help. Together, they stood and looked down the corridor, at what should have been their escape route. A heavy door now blocked it, and a red light was flashing beside it. 

"We've been holed," Tarrant observed, unnecessarily. 

"Do you think we can circle the sealed compartments?" Dayna asked. 

"I don't know. Let's get back to the flight deck and find out." He staggered in the shock wave from another blast. 

The flight deck was not a place for the weak-stomached. Most of the instrumentation seemed to have been blown in the power surge and what was left was spotted with blood. Dayna fell over a bodyless head and turned away to be sick. 

Fighting his own nausea, Tarrant made his way to the pilot's station. The pilot himself was slumped in his seat, his head at an unnatural angle. 

"Dead." 

Dayna's voice held a shake. "Let's get out of here, Tarrant. Avon and the others will be waiting." She was trying to avoid looking at Ardron. Perhaps his body had not been turned inside out, but that was how it looked. The smell drifting through the air along with the smoke was hideous. 

"Yes... if they've got that far..." 

"Come on." 

"Let's find out what's happening first," Tarrant suggested. "Try and get me a visual." He pulled the pilot's body onto the floor and checked the controls. They were as dead as the pilot but when he switched on the auxiliaries, the telltales began to light up. 

"I have your visual." Dayna's voice was still unsteady, but it held determination. Tarrant glanced towards her. She was leaning over a dead man's shoulder at the navigation station. 

"Put it on the main screen," he ordered. 

Now he could see what was happening. _Cloudstalker_ was still fleeing on course towards a steadily growing planet. Around them buzzed the pirate ships, continuing to harry the Guild vessel. 

Even as he watched, the pirate vessels scored another hit. This time, the main lights went out and there was a sudden absence of gravity, with ensuing sensations of vertigo and panic. Tarrant clung to the back of the pilot's chair and cursed. Dayna just held onto the nearest object - the dead navigator. 

When the lights and the gravity came back, they were not accompanied by the vibration of the engines. When Tarrant checked the instruments, there was no doubt: all power to the engines had been cut. Without power the ship could not attain orbit. She would either by-pass the planet altogether or plunge disastrously into its atmosphere. Tarrant could not be sure which without further navigational computation. 

Meanwhile, the pirate ships were closing around _Cloudstalker._ Tarrant was not sure if they were planning to board her or make sure of her destruction. One thing, however, was certain: 

"We can't get to the cargo hold in time," he told Dayna. He slipped into the pilot's chair and put his hands to the controls, feeling the ship respond. Then he switched on the address system, hoping that it had been damaged enough to disguise his voice without being too badly damaged to carry it. 

"This is the flight deck. All crew members stand by. Repair parties, engine room, I must have power now. We are going to make planetfall in..." He checked the figures. "...approximately five minutes. That is all." 

 

Avon and Vila stared at each other as the voice over the address system ceased. Vila's expression was a parody of comical astonishment and Avon's eyes had rounded in the way they did when he was truly startled. 

Vila expressed their common feeling in words "He's out of his mind!" 

Avon recovered his poise. "That is nothing unusual. Well, he has plainly made his decision. As Dayna has not joined us I presume that she has made hers and is staying with him. Let's go." 

"But-" Cally began. 

"You can join Tarrant if you like." Without waiting for a reply, Avon started towards the escape rockets. Vila began to follow, then, realising that Cally was not with them, turned back to see her staring directly at the icecat. It was no longer clawing at its cage, but instead staring intently at Cally. Vila thought that it was considering how good a meal she might make. He pulled at her arm. 

"Come on, Cally." 

"No. Vila, this beast... it is... intelligent, I am sure. Not, perhaps, as intelligent as we are... though perhaps ... I don't know. We must free it." 

"Free it!" In panic, Vila grabbed Cally's wrist to pull her away, but he had not anticipated the sudden and skilled reaction which snapped her free and left him nursing a sore wrist. In the same movement, Cally raised her gun while the icecat backed to the far side of the cage. Cally blasted the damaged corner, shattering it completely. The icecat leaped through the opening. 

Vila yelped and fled towards the hatch that led to the escape rockets. Avon had turned at the noise of the gun and was watching the tableau in disbelieving fury. The sound had also attracted the attention of the damage control party at the far side of the hold, as Avon had feared all along. 

"What the hell is going on over there?" a man's voice bellowed. 

Then a shot missed Cally by centimetres as she ran to join Avon and Vila. She whirled, dropping to one knee to return fire. Avon pushed Vila at the hatch controls and fired at the repairmen. 

Suddenly, the icecat was between them. Making a noise reminiscent of a rocket exhaust, it swept out a massive paw to down one man as the others scattered. Avon drew a bead on the beast, then hesitated. The icecat was certainly keeping their enemies at bay. Then Vila called to him that the hatch was open and he turned to follow the thief into the opening. 

Cally, though, did not join them immediately. Instead, she called telepathically to the icecat. //Leave them and come with us.// 

The beast swirled like a snow-filled whirlwind, up into the stored cargo. It loped quickly along the top of the packing crates, then floated down to Cally's side. They dived through the hatch together into the airlock. Cally slammed the hatch and secured it, conscious of the warmth of the icecat pressed against her. It did not speak into her mind yet she was aware of its trust. She forced her way around its bulky body to the inner hatch. 

//Stay quiet,// she ordered as the inner door to the escape rocket opened. Together, they passed through into the cabin. 

Avon had taken the pilot's seat. Cally knew he was more than capable of flying something this simple and flying it well. Vila was at the small navigation board to his side. 

"Cally?" Avon asked, without looking round. 

"I'm here." 

"Outer moorings free," Vila reported crisply. "Locks open." 

Cally slid hurriedly into a seat and fastened the harness, warning the icecat to stay back. 

"Emergency release!" Avon ordered. 

The escape rocket shuddered. Cally was pressed back into her seat as the small ship surged forward. The hull of a spaceship loomed below, the massive arc of a planet above, a thin line of black space separating the two. The fiery darts of the attacking pirate ships burnt their way across all three. A beam lanced out to dash itself against _Cloudstalker_ , then was gone. 

Avon advanced the power control. The escape rocket plunged under the stern of the larger ship, right between the fins. If _Cloudstalker's_ engines had started at that moment, they would have been fried. 

The icecat howled. Avon had no time to spare a glance behind him, but Vila did. "It's in here!" he cried in horror. "It's in here!" 

"It is all right," said Cally. There was no time for further explanation as, through the forward ports, she saw the pirate ships coming in to attack. "Avon!" 

"I know." Avon was already turning the escape rocket. He added the emergency boosters to the thrust of the engines, sending the tiny craft plunging straight towards the very centre of the attacking formation. Before they could fire, the escape rocket was amongst them where, if they fired on it, they would probably hit each other. The escape rocket passed so close to the leading ship that it almost scraped its hull. Vila had time to notice the astounded expression on the face of its female pilot, before Avon rolled them upwards towards the cloud-strewn planet. Vila closed his eyes and held on tightly to the arms of his chair. He knew that it was an illusion, to feel dizzy in a null-G zone, but he still got motion sickness during violent manoeuvres. When he opened them again, the planet was filling the forward ports so that even the blackness of space was obliterated. 

Avon reached over and checked Vila's safety harness. 

"Cally, are you strapped in?" he asked. 

"Yes, but the icecat-" 

"I don't know what that beast is doing here but it will have to take its chances. If you can't control it, shoot it." 

Cally looked back at the closely tacked seats and saw that the icecat had wedged itself between two rows, its great claws hooked into the floor. 

_Yes,_ she thought. _Very intelligent._

//Stay quiet, my friend. All will be well.// 

The darkness outside the ports became absolute, the silence replaced by the nerve-scraping scream of the atmosphere tearing past the trembling metal. 

"Hull temperature's going up," Vila reported. "Avon... it just occurred to me... if this ship's as old as _Cloudstalker_..." 

"I don't care if it's old, so long as it's sound." Avon could feel the heat seeping into the cabin, but it was not only that that was causing him to sweat. Vila was right. They should not be feeling this much heat. The engines were labouring and the escape rocket was sluggish in responding. The tremble had become a violent shake. 

The ebony outside was turning to midnight, then to navy. Avon decided that he could wait no longer and fired the retros. The din became even worse and for a dark minute he contemplated failure, before he saw that the airspeed had begun to drop away. 

The sky was dark blue now, and black clouds gathered far below the racing escape rocket. 

Avon pushed the damp hair off his forehead, and started breathing again. 

Cally asked, "What about the other ships?" 

"If anyone decided to chase us, we lost them," said Vila. "Hey, Avon, can you put us down in one piece?"

 

As the escape rocket disappeared down towards the planet, Dayna said, with relief, "Whoever they are, they're clear. The pirate ships aren't closing on the Hinkal defences. It looks like Ardron was right about that." 

"Yes." 

"Anyway, let's hope it was Avon and the others." 

"They were supposed to be waiting for us in the cargo hold." 

"But they'd've heard your announcement to the crew," Dayna pointed out. 

Tarrant was not sure he liked the implications. He thumbed the intercom. "What about power to the engines?" 

"Who is that?" a suspicious voice demanded. 

"This is the flight deck," Tarrant replied. "If you know-" 

"Tarrant!" Dayna shouted as the pirate ships again opened fire on the _Cloudstalker_. Tarrant thrust the power controls to full, and prayed that any gods who might have half an ear open would direct their attention to the Greater Magellanic Cloud. 

The ship responded with a surge of power. Tarrant changed course, swinging towards planetary orbit, down and under the pirate ships. 

"Done it!" Dayna shrieked, 

"Not so fast..." Tarrant muttered. "Power's fluctuating. I'm taking her straight down, Dayna. Let's just hope she holds together." 

 

The escape rocket skimmed low over the surface of an ocean, along the path of light laid down by the red sun standing above its horizon. Sky and sea were pink and silver and green; a candyfloss world. 

In the rear of the little craft, the icecat was making chirruping noises of contentment. 

Vila glanced nervously backwards. "Is that thing safe?" 

"No," said Avon. 

"Yes," said Cally. 

"There's nothing I like better them a unanimous opinion," Vila muttered, huddling down in his seat. 

"I'd like to know what excuse you have for bringing that thing on board, Cally," Avon said stiffly. 

"He is an intelligent being who was just as much a prisoner as we were, if not more so. I need not justify freeing him to you or to anyone, Avon." 

"It is a wild animal and it is a killer," said Avon. 

"Not without cause. It is not dangerous to us." 

"Look, can we argue about this later?" Vila asked. "That looks like land ahead of us." 

By the time Avon could look, the brown smudge on the horizon had resolved itself into sand dunes with a plain behind them. 

"I'll reduce airspeed," he said. "Start looking for signs of civilization. I want to land far enough outside of any cities to avoid the local militia but I don't want to have to walk back from the middle of nowhere." 

"Oh, I agree completely," Vila told him fervently. 

The dunes whistled away under them, the rocket exhausts whipping up a sandstorm. Before the grains resettled, the craft had vanished from sight and hearing. 

On the plain, shaggy, grey-brown animals raised their heads as the strange object thundered overhead, but they were placid beasts, and stupid and, when the noise had gone, they returned to their grazing. 

"I saw buildings to the south," said Vila. 

"Good." Avon swung the escape rocket onto a southerly course, towards a ridge of mountains rising out of the sea-plain, white-hatted and skirted in blue-green. 

"We're getting low on fuel," Avon went on. "I'll put her down in the mountains. There should be plenty of cover there." 

"Can you land her?" Vila asked anxiously. 

"We'll both know soon enough," Avon replied, applying the airbrakes. 

 

I was woken by Silkay's hand on my shoulder. "Blake, there is news," the wi'h said. 

"Yes?" I was fully awake now, and eager. 

"The computer that you brought here says that it must speak with you at once." 

Looking at my watch, I saw that I had only been asleep for about four hours. No wonder I felt as if I had not slept at all. "I'm coming," I told Silkay, feeling for my robe. "Damn Orac, anyway." 

"I will bring you some seru," said Silkay, and retreated. 

I padded through the darkened house into the lounge where I had left Orac. In the hooplight, the room was unfamiliar, full of objects I could not identify. Only Orac stood out clearly, a faintly-lit cube that flickered in multicoloured patterns. 

"Well, Orac? What have you got for me?" 

"I would appreciate swifter attendance when I summon you," said the computer, "particularly as you informed me that the matter was of some urgency." 

"It is. Report, Orac." 

"The defence and space traffic control computers on the planet Hinkal are recording an orbital battle between a squadron of pirate vessels out of the Mare's Nest and _Cloudstalker_ , a Guild ship. In fact, _Cloudstalker_ was the last Guild ship to leave Scitech Central before the attack of the minumal swarm though it appears to have remained in orbit during the early part of the minumal attack. As _Cloudstalker's_ computers are so antiquated that they do not contain tarial cells, they are closed to me, but information from other Guild computers suggests that the minumal were brought to Scitech Central by the Guild and released there at the request of the Captain of the _Cloudstalker_. There is a general alert for the leaders of the Guild squadrons to assemble at a place called Spacemeet. Logic suggests that Avon, Cally, Vila, Dayna and Tarrant are on board the _Cloudstalker._ " 

"Logic certainly does. Is _Cloudstalker_ badly damaged? Are they landing on Hinkal?" 

"Hinkal traffic control computers have recorded the release and safe descent of an escape rocket. _Cloudstalker_ is attempting an emergency landing. The pirate craft are retreating back to the Mare's Nest." 

"Keep monitoring. Silkay!" 

He appeared at once, carrying the steaming cup of seru he had promised me. I took it automatically. "Thanks. Find two of your people who are familiar with the modifications we've made to _Moonshadow _, who are willing to come with me to Hinkal, and have them meet me aboard the ship."__

__"I will accompany you."_ _

__"No. I want you to go out to the Yards and take those probes we discussed before I went in to Central. This is my personal business and I ask the help of the wi'h as a favour - but I'm not going to interfere with the work on the Yard Barriers._ _

__"You will always have the help of the wi'h," said Silkay, "even though you are the only man who does not demand it. You have given yours freely to us; no other human I have known would have done that."_ _

__"You've known the wrong humans," I told him. "I'm hoping to introduce you to some of the right ones - soon. Meanwhile, I'm moving as soon as I've got some clothes on."_ _

__

__"Where's the damn spaceport?!" Tarrant howled above the combined scream of engines and atmosphere._ _

__"Steer 039," Dayna told him, as she hung on to the navigation station._ _

__"Hinkal Control to Guild ship _Cloudstalker_ ," an exasperated and rather frightened voice was repeating from the communicator. "You are not cleared for landing. Resume holding orbit. Repeat: resume holding orbit." _ _

__"Shut him up!" Tarrant snarled._ _

__"I wish I could," Dayna snapped back, harassed._ _

__"Flight deck." That was the voice from the Engineering Section. "Flight deck, I'm going, to have to cut the power. It's gone into feedback, and the engines are running towards explosion point."_ _

__"No!" Tarrant shouted. "You must hold power!"_ _

__"Cutting powe-" The voice broke off abruptly. Seconds later, they heard the bellow of an explosion and the ship bucked wildly, then the flight deck seemed almost silent as the engine noise disappeared and all that remained was the atmospheric wail, joined now by the hitherto masked groans of the over-strained hull casing._ _

__"What's below us?"_ _

__"Water!"_ _

__"I'll try and ditch in it..." Tarrant growled, fighting to keep _Cloudstalker_ straight. Her glide characteristics were atrocious and she was trying to spin in the shock of the explosion. "Dayna, give me an altitude countdown." _ _

__"Eleven hundred and thirty metres," Dayna reported obediently. "...nine hundred..."_ _

__"At one hundred, get down on the floor."_ _

__"Seven hundred... six hundred..." Dayna was surprised to find her voice steady. _We should have gone with Avon _, she thought. Then, _I hope they made it._ "Two hundred... one hundred..." She fell flat to the deck. Tarrant abandoned the controls and followed her example. ___ _

_____Cloudstalker's_ flat bottom slapped down hard on the water, raising a storm cloud of spray. She dipped deep, so the surface almost closed over her, but rose again like a spouting whale. Unfortunately, the impact had split her hull and she wallowed, slowly beginning to sink. _ _ _ _

____Dayna scrambled to her feet in water that was already rising over her ankles, pouring in through a hole in the hull that was getting wider even as she watched. Hurriedly, she plashed over to Tarrant and grabbed his shoulder._ _ _ _

____"Tarrant!"_ _ _ _

____He didn't move. Dayna grabbed two handfuls of his shirt and heaved him over. His eyes were closed and there was a bruise on his forehead, but she slapped his face anyway. "Tarrant!"_ _ _ _

____Realising that it was no use, she began dragging him through the water towards the split in the hull. The floor dipped under them as the ship rolled, sending Dayna to her knees. More water spilled in, sloshing over Tarrant's supine body. Dayna guessed that she would not be able to pull him out of the ship before it sank, but she knew she could not leave him._ _ _ _

____It was a relief when he solved her dilemma by beginning to struggle. Promptly, she hauled him to his feet. "Come on, Tarrant."_ _ _ _

____"Uh?" He was still leaning heavily on her, but at least his legs were moving of their own volition._ _ _ _

____"Can you swim?"_ _ _ _

____"Swim?" Tarrant blinked groggily at her. "At the Federation Space Academy I was-"_ _ _ _

____"Save your breath."_ _ _ _

____They reached the rent in the hull, fighting their way through the onrushing water, cold and salt. Dayna grabbed the edge of the hull and pulled herself outside by main force, feeling Tarrant shove her onwards._ _ _ _

____Then all was confusion as water closed over her head and she was fighting her way through raging waves. She kicked off her shoes, then stroked powerfully for the surface. Within moments, her head broke through into air and light. She took a couple of deep breaths, treading water meanwhile and shaking it out of her ears and eyes. Waves were coming at her from all directions, slapping her face and buffeting her from side to side._ _ _ _

_____Cloudstalker_ still loomed over her, water now more than halfway up its hull, and Dayna set about putting as much distance as possible between herself and the sinking spaceship. She had been brought up on the edge of an ocean on the planet Sarran and swam both powerfully and economically, so the ship was well behind before she found herself fighting the drag as it went under. _ _ _ _

____Looking back, she saw a great flat expanse of foam, and nothing else. There was no sign of any other survivor... not even Tarrant._ _ _ _

____Dayna rolled onto her back and floated. She could see no land and no flying creatures to indicate its direction. There was nothing she could do except wait._ _ _ _

____She waited._ _ _ _


	7. Waytrack

Cally sat on the edge of a boulder, looking down the gentle, winding valley that ran towards the sea. Her hand rested on the head of the icecat that crouched beside her. Behind her, the escape rocket lay half-hidden by the trees into which Avon had steered her. The red sun was high in the sky but obscured by drifting cloud, and the day was not hot. From the angle of inclination, Cally thought they were in the temperate regions. Far away down the valley, she could see some sort of roadway cutting through the trees and cultivated fields surrounding buildings. They were plainly not far from whatever civilization this planet possessed. 

"Cally." Avon's voice spoke from behind her. 

The icecat grumbled warningly. 

Cally soothed it with a thought, then turned to smile at Avon. "It is quite safe. He will not harm you." 

Avon made his way cautiously round the icecat, which regarded him curiously. 

Cally said: "Touch him, Avon." 

"Wait a minute-" Avon stopped himself. "Is that thing really sentient?" 

"Does he behave like a wild animal?" 

"No," Avon admitted, then, with some reluctance, he offered the icecat his clenched fist. 

//This is Avon. He is my friend... and yours.// 

The icecat touched Avon's hand with his nose, then withdrew. 

"It is going to be very conspicuous if you insist on it staying with us." 

"Then people will notice him and not us," Cally replied. 

Avon shrugged. Though he did not like or trust the icecat, he understood Cally too well to press her when her voice took on that tone. She could be just as stubborn as... as... Blake used to be. Avon pushed away the surprisingly painful thought. 

"Where is Vila?" Cally was asking. 

"Inspecting his bruises, raiding the first aid box and complaining about my piloting. I told him he could have stayed with Tarrant and he swore at me." As Cally laughed, Avon added, "I wonder if _Cloudstalker_ was destroyed..." 

"You are worried about Dayna and Tarrant?" 

"Tarrant is well able to take care of himself, as he keeps telling us, but Dayna... she's little more than a child... and her father said..." He halted appalled at the way his tongue had run away with him in Cally's sympathetic presence. He expected some sort of comment, but the alien woman simply sat and stroked the icecat's fur. 

After a while, she said, "I must give this one a name." 

"Really, Cally, this is neither the time nor the place for pets!" Avon exploded, glad to have something on which to vent his defensive anger. 

"He is not a pet but a person!" Cally retorted. She considered for a while. //I will call you Lanrir. It is the name of a smoky grey-blue jewel stone of my world. The word means 'sky-ice'.// She felt that the icecat approved. 

"His name is Lanrir," she stated. 

Avon raised despairing eyes to the turquoise sky. "Come on, Cally. We've got to leave this area before someone traces the escape rocket's position and comes to investigate. I've already stripped out everything we can take with us." 

Cally rose to her feet. "Good." She smiled gently at Avon and slipped her arm through his. "Now, let us go and remove Vila from the medical supplies."

 

Dayna had tried shouting for Tarrant but the wind whipped the words from her lips and blew them into oblivion. The sea was becoming very choppy, turning cold and grey as the clouds piled up to drape the entire sky in dark curtains. It took all Dayna's will power to stay here where Cloudstalker had crashed rather than to start swimming in the hope of finding land. It was here that her best hope of rescue lay, as the search parties would arrive at this spot more quickly than anywhere else. 

It started to drizzle. Dayna continued to tread water, laying all the Sarran curses that she knew on the local weather spirits. Then she heard another noise mixing with the wind - a high pitched whine. Looking up, she saw a bright yellow aircar coming downwards from the clouds. 

She waved frantically, then, realising that her black hair and skin would make her almost invisible against the dark-grey seas, she lay on her back and windmilled her arms, kicking wildly with her legs to raise as much spray as possible. It was very tiring, but Dayna kept it up until she saw the aircar turn towards her. 

Within three minutes she was being hauled on board by two large men in waterproof gear. She was so glad to see them and to be out of the cold water that it wasn't until she was seated in the rear cabin of the big vehicle that she realised that the faces around her were not friendly. 

Drawing the thermal blanket more closely about her, she tried to smile at them, a difficult job as her teeth were chattering. "Th...thank...y...y...you. H...h...have you...p...picked up any other s...survivors." 

She was simply and very completely ignored. 

"I...I...h...had a f...friend. I...we got...s...separated..." 

Now someone took notice of her. "Shaddap!" one of the men snarled at her before returning to his scrutiny of the ocean below. 

"Guilder bitch..." another added, under his breath. 

Dayna gave up. Ten minutes later, Tarrant was hauled aboard, dripping wet and plainly exhausted. He collapsed into the seat beside her. "I...I...see you made it," he panted. 

"Yes." Dayna looked at him warningly. "Our welcome seems a little doubtful. These people don't seem very friendly. Do you think there were any other survivors from _Cloudstalker?_ " 

"I didn't see any." 

"Neither did I." 

"Of course, there was-" Tarrant swallowed, remembering Dayna's warning. No use in letting their captors know of the escape rocket. The others would be better off without the sort of help that they were receiving here. 

Dayna sighed. Frying pan and fire-wise, as Vila had put it, their luck continued to be all bad. 

 

"My feet ache," Vila complained. 

"Try crawling," Avon suggested unsympathetically. He was not enjoying the trek himself, and he had a blister on one heel, but he was certainly not going to complain about it. The really infuriating thing was that Cally was plainly enjoying herself, despite the light rain that had been falling steadily for what seemed like hours, drenching the upright-branched needle-leaved trees and the broad-leaved, spreading ground cover. 

"I should have stayed with Tarrant," Vila announced. 

"Why is it that you always have these good ideas after the event?" 

"And I'm tired." 

"No more than I am - of your voice." 

"Humph," said Vila, aggrieved. He trudged on in silence, occasionally tripping over a particularly tough stem. These seemed to have a built-in mechanism for trapping his ankles that did not seem to affect the others. Perhaps it was some kind of vegetable magnetism. Cally and Lanrir glided over the rough ground as if it were a flat road, and even Avon seemed surefooted enough. 

Well, Vila thought, at least we're going downhill. He wiped a wet face with a wet hand. Everything was dripping. 

_Avon arranged this,_ he decided. _He knows I hate walking. Especially walking in the cold and wet. Come to think of it, Avon doesn't like the cold and wet much, either._

This thought cheered Vila, and he began to bounce a little as he followed Cally and the icecat. 

Suddenly, Lanrir halted, standing statue-like, ears cocked forwards. Cally stopped too, holding up her hand. Vila, halted, thankfully, but Avon moved forward to join the woman and the icecat. 

They had reached the roadway that Cally had spotted from the mountainside. At this distance, it was far from impressive. The trees had been cleared away to make a routeway, but the ground was still rough, rutted and vegetation-covered. The vehicles that travelled it were plainly not wheeled or tracked. Now, however, there was no sign of any traffic. 

"What do you think?" Cally asked Avon. 

"Rough as it is, we'll make better time along it than in the trees, but, on the other hand, we would be better off avoiding everyone at the moment. The natives might not be friendly." 

"Yes, Lanrir is the friendliest creature we have met in the Cloud so far. The humans here seem even more hostile to strangers than the ones back home. But that also means that we must get as far away from the escape rocket as quickly as we can." 

"We'll chance the road," Avon decided. 

"Very well." 

Avon turned his head. "Come on, Vila." 

The thief had just sat down on the wet ground, and it was with a mutter of complaint that he got up again. He brightened considerably when he saw the road, and even more so when, twenty minutes later, they left the woods behind and found themselves walking between cultivated fields, with a small cluster of low, red houses in a hollow below them. 

It was at that point, though, that Avon bundled him off the road and into the fields, where tall, slim-stalked plants waved their heavy, pinkly-fluffed heads more than two metres above their own. 

"What do you think you're doing?" Vila protested, shaking himself free and glaring at Avon. 

"Don't you think we were just a little conspicuous?" 

"But there's a village down there. Food. Shelter." 

"And people who must be considered enemies until they prove themselves friends. Look at it from their point of view. We're total strangers, wearing strange clothes and with odd accents, knowing nothing of local customs, accompanied by a ferocious-looking beast the size of a groundcar. By now there probably isn't a person on the planet who doesn't know about our escape rocket, so guess what will happen if we show ourselves within a couple of hundred kilometres of the probably landing site?" 

"We'll be identified," Vila said glumly. 

"How clever of you to have worked it out. Cally and I would never have thought of it without you." 

"So we avoid the village?" Vila asked, in disappointed but resigned tones. 

"Not... entirely. We need information and local currency: information to get us to the nearest city and money to help us survive the first few days when we get there." 

"What about food? Transport?" 

"We have concentrates. I presume that the icecat can feed itself. Stealing transport will give away our position and make us too conspicuous. What we need is a map. You're sure to find one in the village." 

"Huh? I'm...? Oh, no, Avon. I'm not a cat burglar or a sneak thief." 

"You are a thief. A professional. The best, in your own estimation. Find a house where everyone is out, open the door, go in, lock the door behind you and then search the place for a map and money. Repeat the process until you find them, then come on out. Don't let anyone see you." 

"But Avon, suppose that someone does see me?" 

"Then you must exercise your rusting wits and talk your way out of the situation..." Avon paused. "Perhaps I'd better go with you." 

"But Avon-" 

"Just to make sure that you actually do go into the village and not just report back to me that you did and that you couldn't find a map."

"Would I do something like-?" 

"Stay here, Cally," Avon ordered, interrupting Vila. His fingers closed tightly on the other man's wrist. "Come with me, Vila, and we'll set that so-called 'genius' of yours to work."

 

"Your names?" 

A security man is a security man is a security man, in any place and at any time. Tarrant and Dayna had immediately recognised the one sitting in front of them as a typical example of the breed, and the sight did not thrill them. It appeared that they were going to be questioned at once, despite the fact that they were still damp, neither had any shoes, nor had they been fed. Tarrant decided that he should not have skipped breakfast. 

"Your names?" the security man snarled. 

Dayna could not see any reason to antagonise him further, or to withhold their names at all. "I'm Dayna Mellanby and this is Del Tarrant." 

Their interrogator spoke into a box on his desk. "Check records of registered Guild citizens for the names Dayna Mellanby and Del Tarrant. Record them as survivors of the spaceship Cloudstalker, now held by the Government of Hinkal. I am ordering them transferred to Detention Level B6."

"Wait a minute," Tarrant interposed. "I think I should explain that Dayna and I are-" 

"You'll explain nothing, Guilder! You are guilty of violating our airspace, endangering the lives of our citizens, polluting our oceans..." 

Tarrant began to laugh at that. 

Dayna said quickly, "We were under attack." 

"That is no excuse. The Guild is going to have to pay quite a large amount in reparations if it wants you back." 

"But we aren't members of the Guild," Dayna protested. 

"No? Then whose citizens are you? A Cloud World? Scitech? What?" 

"No... we... look, you can check our identities with Sc-" Dayna stopped as Tarrant stood on her foot. She glared at him, but did not resume her explanation. 

The security officer spoke to his guards. "Put this trash in the cells - and leave the woman alone for the moment. She may be worth more to the Guilder bastards if she's left intact." 

 

_How did I ever get into this?_ Vila asked himself. He looked behind him. No sign of Avon now, of course, but Vila knew better than to think that he wasn't watching. Vila was standing in an alleyway, with light from the newly emerged sun slanting down between the pale-red glasamt walls and reflecting off the wet stone paving. He found the buildings a little surprising. Glasamt was a material used to build temporary emergency buildings within the Federation. These structures seemed permanent. Some were even overgrown with creamy-yellow climbing plants. 

Bending low so his eyes were just on a level with a window sill, he peered into the room beyond. That was dim and apparently empty, but the little he could see of it seemed to indicate a mixture of living space and office. 

Leaving the window, Vila went silently along to the end of the alley and the door in the house wall. It was not locked. He pulled it open carefully, then stepped smartly into the hallway beyond and closed it softly behind him. 

Haven't had time to case the place, he thought resentfully, as he padded past a slightly open door, behind which he could hear voices. Low, female voices. He was glad when it was behind him. Pushing open a door on his right, he peered round it then, seeing that he was indeed looking into the room that he had seen through the window, he dived around the door and closed it behind him. 

He went straight to the desk and unlocked the drawers. There was nothing inside them but receipts and what looked like handwritten copies of computer printouts. It was only then that he realised that the room did not have a computer terminal, not even a hand held one. There were calculations in the margins of the account books. He goggled at them. 

_Talk about primitive,_ he thought. _I wonder what I'll find next? A radio set?_

What he did find was a bookcase that contained mainly printed works. 

_Avon would love this,_ he thought. _So would Blake, if he was still alive... Ah, what's this?_

_An atlas of the Greater Magellanic Cloud._

_Well, we'll have that._

He also found a much-worn map viewer, slim enough to slip into a pocket. He appropriated it and slipped it into his. 

There. That had been much easier than he had thought it would be... 

The door started to open. Vila scurried into cover behind a chair, tucking his arms and legs as close to his body as he could. 

A woman's voice said, "I'm sorry, Mi, but Joon's gone with the search parties to locate that ship that came down in the mountains." 

"If you could just find the authorisation, Reema, then I could deal with the Agriculture Department. If I'm going to expand, I'll need a subsidy, and Joon's experiences with them might help. He promised-" 

"Yes, I know." There was the sound of a drawer opening. "That man of mine. I keep telling him to lock this drawer." 

"Why? Who'd steal anything? This isn't Lomril city." 

"That's what Joon says, but I tell him that we do get travellers through here... Indes, for instance. World-hoppers. Thieves." 

"We haven't got anything they want here," Mi protested. He settled himself down in the chair behind which Vila was hiding. Vila felt the weight bulge against his knees and tried to shrink within himself, stilling his breathing. 

"Where the Devil is that AgD authorisation?" the woman grumbled. "Really, this desk is a mess. Ah, I think this is it. Would you like to look it over, Mi, while I go and make some jintree. I'm sure you'd like some." 

"Umm. That's kind of you. Thanks, Reema." 

Vila heard the door open and close. He was having problems fighting an overwhelming desire to sneeze. He held his nose and tried to breathe through his mouth, but he found this difficult to do quietly. Then his leg muscles began to jump with cramp. He gritted his teeth, took one hand away from his nose and used it to massage his legs. He began to count off seconds in his head. When he had counted to sixty five times he began to wonder about Avon. 

Would he just go off and leave him? No, he wanted those maps. Surely he wouldn't try and come after them himself? That would ruin everything. 

The woman came back into the room and brought an appetising, spicy smell with her, a smell that reminded Vila of lemons and tasquree. He hadn't realised until then how thirsty he was. His mouth was beginning to water. 

It remained watering for several more minutes while Mi and Reema sipped their drinks in silence. 

"Yes," Mi said, at last, "I think I understand it, but can I take it with me, Reema." 

"Well... I'm not sure what Joon would say..." 

_Who cares?_ Vila thought. _Get on with it, you stupid woman._

Finally, Reema did agree, but then she and Mi remained gossiping for what seemed like years. 

Vila was the first to notice another sound. It grew until it was louder than the voices, a rumbling sound accompanied by squeaks. Finally, it came to the attention of the two gossips. 

"What's that?" Reema asked. 

"I don't know. It sounds like... but it can't be..." Mi got to his feet, much to Vila's relief, and went to the window. He opened it and leaned out. "There's something moving on the waytrack. Gods! There's a herd of galine out there." 

"But surely they can't get out of the pens?" 

"They're out! Come on!" 

Half a minute later, the house was empty, except for Vila Restal, who rose slowly to his feet, then spent the next two minutes dancing about cursing with pain as cramp shot through his legs. Clutching the atlas, he limped over to the door and looked into the hall. It was empty. 

He was about to leave when a thought struck him and he went back to the desk. Sorting out some of the vistapes, he made a mental note of the address on the packaging, drank the remains of the jintree, and made his way out into the empty alleyway. 

As he turned to go back the way he had originally come, a huge hairy beast with massive, upward curling horns came straight towards him, squeaking incongruously with massive anger. It plunged down the narrow walkway, straight at the petrified thief. 

Vila squeaked louder than the beast and whirled to run in the opposite direction, but the charging animal swiftly overtook him. With lowered horns only centimetres from his back, Vila leaped upwards, his hands hooking over the eaves of the low roof and into the gutter. His feet dabbled on the broad back as it passed, then he dropped down behind the well-padded backside with its patch of fluff in lieu of a tail. 

Though the fall jarred his ankles, he paused only to scoop up his dropped atlas before running for cover. 

Suddenly, Avon had his arm. Vila yelped and jumped, a performance which Avon ignored. "This way." Vila followed him blindly, hardly aware of the plunging animal bodies to his left, beyond Avon, in the clouds of dust, or of the yelling men and women who were much too busy to notice his existence. Then they were off the track and plunging through scrub, then into the field of tall, pink-headed plants, where Vila tripped and fell headlong. Avon grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him upright again. 

When he finally let him go, he didn't give Vila time to draw breath before he was demanding, "Where the hell did you get to?" 

"Woman... man... talking. What were those things?" 

"Some sort of local herd animal. We thought you might need a diversion so we smashed a few fences and that icecat of Cally's drove them into the village. They appeared to take a real dislike to the beast." 

Vila glared at him. "Next time keep your diversions to yourself. I almost got gored." 

"Did anyone see you? And did you get the maps?" 

"No and yes. Look, Avon, the next time you want me to steal something, leave me alone to do it. It's my job and I'm good at it." 

"You'd been gone too long," Avon growled. 

"You were worried?" 

"About you giving away our location? Yes." 

"Is that all you care about-? Yeow!" Vila stopped so abruptly that he sat down backwards, as he came face to face with Lanrir. The icecat licked its chops. Vila blanched. 

Cally appeared behind him. "Thank Valska. We were afraid that you'd been hurt or captured. Come this way. I have found water and cover, and Lanrir has killed. I have taken some of the meat, so we will eat well now. Come." 

 

Vila lay sprawled on his back, looking up at the sky. A small stream burbled happily to itself as it skipped down towards the village and its sound made him drowsy, as did his happy repleteness. While he had turned away in disgust from the icecat's kill, he had found the meat palatable enough after Cally had used the hand-roaster from the escape rocket to cook it, making the concentrates unnecessary and all he wanted to do now was to sleep off the effects. 

Avon and Cally were poring over the atlas and the map-viewer. "Our first problem," Avon was saying, "is to locate our present position." 

"Above Snake Valley Township," Vila contributed, without moving. 

"What?" 

"Snake Valley Township. Saw it on a vistape address folder." 

Avon looked sharply at Vila's recumbent figure. "Sometimes I suspect that he is not as stupid as he appears." 

Cally laughed. "If you are not sure of that by now you never will be. Look, Avon, if Vila is right then this is where we landed, this is the village, and this is where we are now." 

"Hmmm. It could have been much worse. This large town, Lomril, is only about a hundred and fifty kilometres away." 

"Lomril is the capital of this planet," said Cally, who had been consulting the atlas. "The star is Teller, and this is its fourth planet, Hinkal." 

"So we're in a good situation to get where we want to be," said Avon. "There's a spaceport at Lomril and it is where Dayna and Tarrant will probably be taken, if they survived, that is." 

"A long walk. I estimate three days, at least." 

"Walk!" Cally's comment had aroused Vila. "All that way?" 

"Do you good," Avon told him. "Do I have to repeat myself? We can't afford to draw anyone's atten-" 

"I don't want to know." 

Cally broke in on the exchange with a practical question. "What do we do when we get to Lomril? We have no money." 

"We have skills," came the reply. "It'll be a novel experience for you, Cally, living by your wits. The animal will have to go, though." 

"No." There was finality in the one word. 

Avon's mouth tightened. "We'll discuss it later." He stood up and pushed at Vila with his foot. "Come on, hero." 

"For this I left Terminal..." Vila complained, but he got up. "We should have stayed at Scitech Central." 

"That," said Avon, "is what I wanted to do in the first place." 

"Poor old Tarrant." Vila grinned happily. "I wonder if he's enjoying himself. I bet you that he isn't walking his feet off." 

"There are worse things," Cally said.

 

Tarrant tested the strength of the restrainers for the tenth time and concluded, as he had concluded nine times before that he had no hope of breaking free of them. He flexed his muscles, trying to set the blood circulating back into his feet. He was sure that they were quite anaemic by now. He had been sitting in this hard, uncomfortable chair for what seemed like hours. He wished that he knew whether Dayna was all right; he hadn't seen her since he'd been brought to this underground interrogation room. 

"So," gloated the man bulging out of the large padded chair at the opposite side of the horizon-forming desk. "You are going to resist us. How very gratifying." 

"I am not resisting you," Tarrant lied. 

"The pirates have never ventured to attack a Guild ship so close to Hinkal before. _Cloudstalker_ must have been carrying something that they wanted very much. What was it?" 

"I tell you I don't know—" Tarrant's sentence concluded in a shout of pain as something activated every nerve in his right leg. 

Even before the agony had passed, a guard standing behind him grabbed a handful of curls and dragged his head up and back so far that he gasped for breath. "Talk! Talk, Guilder bastard, or it won't stop here." 

As Tarrant's head was released to sag forward, the fat man asked, "You were coming from the Hoop?" 

"Yes..." 

"Going where?" 

"I don't know—" This time Tarrant saw the hand move to the controls before his world dissolved in pain. It was both legs this time, as if a fire had been lit under him and he was burning at the stake. "I tell you I don't know!" he screamed. Then, "Wait! Shipmeet! Ardron said... 'Shipmeet'." 

"Shipmeet..." The plummy voice caressed Tarrant's ears. "Shipmeet. Why?" 

"Don't... only Ardron knew. Captain Ardron." 

"Who is conveniently dead. Is Scitech in league with the Guild?" 

"No. Not... not that I know." 

"Well... but you would say that..." The pudgy fingers moved again. 

 

When Tarrant recovered consciousness he found his interrogator looming over him. "What an interestingly stubborn Guilder you are. I may really have to hurt you. I wonder if you realise how vulnerable you are? Do you know, Del Tarrant, that there is no mention of that name on the register of Guild citizens? So who will there be to object if you do not... stay in one piece?"

Soft fingers lifted Tarrant's chin. "These good looks of yours can be... removed. Other things can be removed, too. You'll talk in the end, my handsome Guilder. Now, what is your real name?" 

Tarrant took a deep breath. "Bayban the Butcher." 

The fingers shoved his chin aside. Then the agony engulfed his body, and, this time, it did not cease.

 

Once we were out into space, I found that the tension eased a little. The feel of a ship in flight, even a tiny converted shuttle like _Moonshadow_ , was a palliative to my impatience, as was the sight of the starfield beyond the ports and on the screens. Darkness touched with light. Beautiful. Frightening. Reassuring. Changing and never changing in essence. Once, space had been my home and even now its familiarity comforted me. 

We had passed beyond the Hoop and were under hyperdrive, though Hinkal was still far away. _Moonshadow_ was not fast by Federation standards. Scitech, though, had no interstellar ships at all. The wi'h and I had adapted this one to my own plans, and it had one great advantage: we had installed a version of the detector shield that Avon had designed for _Liberator_... so long ago it seemed now. So, even with few legs and peashooter armament, we were safe enough, as long as we relied on stealth. Not that I had any intention of relying on anything else - not with a crew constitutionally unable to fight. 

"I have a report," Orac announced. 

"Yes?" 

"The computers on Hinkal report that the wreckage of _Cloudstalker_ has been located and two survivors have been taken to Lomril city. Names recorded as Del Tarrant and Dayna Mellanby. The Hinkal government is negotiating with the Guild for reparations and fines." 

"What about the escape rocket?" 

"I was about to inform you that the escape rocket landed somewhere in the western mountains of the southern continent, but its occupants have not yet been located." 

"Good." 

"There is no proof that Avon, Cally or Vila were among the occupants of the escape rocket," Orac objected. "May I point out that-" 

"No you may not. I know Avon. He was on board that escape rocket." 

Even Orac's normal working hum and tick sounded exasperated. I removed his key before he could undermine my emotional assurance with logic. 

After all, Avon, Cally and Vila had to be on that escape rocket. There was nowhere else they could be. Was there? 

 

It was raining again, harder now, and the trees under which they were sheltering failed to provide any real cover, their vertical leaves not being well designed for keeping rain from the ground. 

Vila lay huddled on the earth, the thin but warm and waterproof blanket pulled up to cover even his head. It transmitted every thudding drop to his aching body. Exhausted though he was, he discovered that it was impossible to sleep. He found himself listening intently, but he could hear nothing except the rain and an occasional movement. 

Suddenly, the blanket cracked under a heavier impact of water. Vila lifted the corner and peered through the resultant slit. The icecat, Lanrir, was on his feet, shaking water from his starlight coloured fur. He looked as disgusted with the weather as Vila felt and, for the first time, he had sympathy for the beast. 

Avon was on watch, propped up against a tree trunk, the blanket about his shoulders glimmering faintly in the glow from the smoking embers of their tiny fire. 

_Damn Avon, anyway. This was all his fault._

Vila pulled the blanket back down again. Cally would be asleep. She could sleep anywhere, even on this rough ground where sticks poked into every square centimetre of your body. 

Lanrir made a soft, warning sound. There was an equally quiet sound as Avon got to his feet. Vila snuggled closer to the ground and tried to pretend that he was asleep, hoping that whatever had alarmed the icecat would go away. He held his breath, listening. 

There was only the hiss of the rain. 

Then Avon's voice: a whisper. "Do you hear it, Cally?" 

"Yes." Vila had not heard Cally get up, but her voice came from somewhere close to Avon. "On the waytrack." 

Vila could hear it himself, now, the soft hum of an engine, some distance away and to their left, travelling quite slowly towards them, Cally was right. It was on the road that they themselves had been following - the path the locals called the waytrack. 

It was opposite them now... going past, and on. 

There was a sharp explosion, not really loud but startling, then a louder crunching sound, then nothing at all. The sound of engines had gone. 

Vila shivered, then bit back a yelp as his blanket was pulled away from him. 

"Move!" Avon snapped. 

Vila struggled to his feet and plunged into the night after him, calling, "Avon! Avon... wait for me!" Then, as he caught him up: "What's happening?" 

"Cally and the animal have gone to help," Avon muttered. "Stupid woman." 

"But-" 

"Come on and stay quiet." 

Vila wasn't quite sure how they found the waytrack, but suddenly Avon stopped, and Vila cannoned into him, getting a hard shove to one side as a reward. 

There were lights ahead. Avon dropped to one knee and peered out between the fleshy stems. Vila peered over his shoulder. 

They were right on the edge of the waytrack. A vehicle of some kind lay on the ground, tilted slightly to one side. It, and the large AG sled it had been towing, were illuminated by powerful lights positioned in the trees on either side of the road. The sled was still in the air, lifting the back end of the wrecked towing vehicle from the ground. 

Three figures, black-clad and masked, were manhandling a woman with light blonde or white hair. Another man writhed on the ground. 

Avon thought swiftly. There was no way that Cally would stay out of this... 

"Vila, put out the light on this side of the road. If you can find Cally, tell her to hold back..." Then Avon was gone, out of the trees and onto the waytrack. Vila knew that he must be counting on the lights blinding the masked men to anything beyond their nimbus. Vila didn't wait to see if his assumption was correct. He stumbled on sideways through the undergrowth, then fell over something soft. 

From beneath him came a terrible wailing shriek, which drowned Vila's own shout of surprise and fear. 

"What the hell's that?" A voice yelled from the waytrack. 

Out in the open, Avon dropped flat as the three masked men whirled about and the lights swung across to illuminate the opposite rows of forest, then panned over the waytrack. Avon buried his face and hands in the ground cover to hide their paleness. The plants were prickly and smelt of strawberries. 

"Can you see anything?" 

"No." 

"Then do we have a ghost, or what? I've never heard anything like that before." 

A hand was over Vila's mouth and an arm over his back, holding him to the ground. //It is all right, Vila. It's all right. You fell over Lanrir just as I told him to howl.// 

"Cally..." Vila mouthed behind the muffling hand. 

"Shush," Cally ordered, but removed the hand. 

Vila dropped his voice to a suitable level. "Avon says to hold back." 

"But those people are in trouble." 

"I know. I've got to put out the light out on this side of the waytrack. Avon's gone to get the other... I think." 

Cally considered that. "Good. Let's find that lamp." 

 

Avon picked himself up and crouched on the waytrack. The masked men were now looking in the other direction. 

//Avon. Vila and Lanrir are with me. We are going to put out the light.// 

Avon breathed a small breath of relief, then sprinted for the safety of the trees on the far side of the waytrack. 

Cally and Vila made their way through the trees, coming up behind the light source, seeing now that it was a lamp held by someone - it was impossible to tell if it was man or woman sitting on a fallen log. There was a faint eye-gleam as he/she glanced uneasily behind him/her. 

//Hide yourself, Vila. When I tell you, make a loud noise.// 

Cally vanished silently. So did Lanrir. Vila buried himself in the undergrowth where his hand encountered a large stick. He picked it up.. 

//Now!!// 

Vila hit the stick very hard against a nearby tree trunk. It broke with a loud crack. At the same time, he made an obnoxious noise through pursed lips. 

The light swung automatically towards him. Cally appeared out of the dark behind its wielder, and struck. As both human and lamp fell, Cally jumped forward to retrieve the light, picking it from the air and swinging it back to focus on the scene on the waytrack. 

//Come to me,// she told Vila. //Take the lamp. Switch it off the instant the other lamp goes out.// 

"Where's the switch?" he hissed, feeling over the smooth casing. 

//Here.// Her fingers guided his. 

//Avon. We have the lamp. Vila will switch it off as soon as you take out the other one.// 

"Thanks," Avon said to himself as he wriggled through the brush. Well, at least Vila had found Cally. It was unfortunate that the holder of his own target seemed to be ensconced in a high tree. It was probably quite easily climbed but he would not be able to do so without making a noise, particularly in this light – or rather, lack of it. If the person in the tree heard him, the light would be turned on him and probably a gun, too. He would have to avoid that. 

He thought for a few moments, wishing that he had a gun himself, then hunted about in the bare roots under the tree. Finally, he found what he had been looking for - a rock the size of his fist, half buried in the earth. 

As he scrabbled it out of the ground, he could hear voices behind him. The attackers were gaining confidence again and there was talk of raping the woman. One man appeared to have qualms about the idea but the others maintained that no-one should worry about Indes. 

Avon picked up his stone, looking upwards towards the light. He could see the person who held it as a dim shadow against the stars, which made him realise, for the first time, that the rain had stopped and the skies were clearing. Clouds were scudding over a tiny crescent moon. There were no branches blocking out the stars between him and his quarry. Praying that his aim was as good as it once had been, Avon hurled the stone upwards with all his considerable strength, aiming at a point half a metre above and behind the light. 

There was a thud and a cry of pain. The bulky lamp came tumbling through the leaves, the beam gyrating like a Catherine wheel jerked loose from its setting. Avon ducked away in case the lamplight might actually shine onto his face. When the lamp hit the ground he pounced on it and turned it off. 

Behind him, a freezing wail that could only have come from the icecat's throat sounded in the darkness. Someone screamed. 

In the tree above Avon's head a woman's voice was sobbing and cursing, but then he heard footsteps crashing towards him and decided that she could wait. 

"Milli!" 

"Watch out!" the woman shouted, but she was too late. The first voice had given Avon the location of his target and he flung himself towards it, wielding the lamp as a club. It jarred in his hands as it struck bone. His opponent grunted and staggered, giving Avon the opportunity to hit him in the stomach, then in his head as he doubled over. Seconds later, he had the man's gun. Whirling, he aimed gun and light together, spotlighting a dark-haired, middle aged woman wedged in a tree fork. As he saw her, he fired, then snapped off the light and dived to his left. 

The woman's returned shot missed him by a metre; his hit the branch she was straddling, disintegrating it under her. She shrieked as she fell. Avon was beside her in an instant, his gun levelled to fire – but she lay quite still. As he touched her head, it rolled limply. She had broken her neck. 

Behind him, all was silent. 

 

The instant the lights went out, Cally came like the wind through the dark. 

The group by the vehicles had scattered at Lanrir's scream and now, in the moonlight and starlight, Cally came face to face with one of them. He pulled up his gun; Cally kicked it out of his hand. He made a grab for her ankle; she pivoted away. He charged after her; she was waiting. Her throw took him over her hip and head first into the side of the vehicle. Afterwards, he lay still. 

Then an arm hooked about Cally's throat. She struggled frantically against strength far greater than her own, weakening even more as she fought for breath. Where was Avon? Vila...? 

Then suddenly the grip on her throat loosened. She felt her attacker slide to the floor and turned to face a stranger. She could see little of his face but the fact that he was not wearing a hood reassured her. 

"My thanks," she said, when she had regained a little breath. 

"My pleasure." 

Then there was light again, so close it was blinding. It moved around until it rested on the hovercar's roof, and then it stopped and Vila came from behind it. 

"Where were you?" Cally demanded. 

"I got here as quickly as I could," Vila replied defensively. "Who's he?" 

Cally looked at her rescuer, revealed in the light as a man of perhaps forty years standard, black haired and olive skinned, with narrow, handsome features ...or rather, features that would have been handsome if they had not been marred by two black eyes, a bruise that covered half his face, and blood running from his nose and lips. 

He said: "I'm one of the people whose lives you just saved." 

"And I'm the other." The woman's voice was quiet as she came and took the man's arm, smiling at Cally. She was in her early thirties, ash blonde and pretty, a prettiness enhanced by skilful hairdressing and make-up, and by her superb voluptuous figure. She looked quite horrified as she took in her companion's appearance. "Oh, Nelse... what did they do to you? Are you sure you're all right? I thought they'd killed you..." 

"So did they, luckily. Though if this young lady and her friend hadn't come to help I think I would have been-" He stopped short, sucking in his breath as Lanrir paced into the light. There was blood on his fur. The blonde woman bit back a cry of fear. 

"He will not harm you," said Cally. 

"But... but that's an icecat. They... they're supposed to be untameable." 

"Lenore has a way with animals." Avon came from the same direction as Lanrir, carrying the second lamp. 

"I should have wondered where the other light went." 

"There are two back there," Avon told Cally, ignoring the stranger's comment. "One's dead. The other's unconscious and won't wake up for hours, if at all. The cat seems to have found someone we didn't know about, but I don't think we need worry." It was only then that he turned his attention to the staring couple. "Why did they attack you?" 

"Why did they...? We're Independents. Isn't that enough? No-one's going to worry about us, so we're anyone's target. Look, just who are you?" 

"How do I know that we can trust you?" Avon parried. 

"Trust us? But you rescued us. You have to be..." His battered face became puzzled and grim. "Explain." 

"I think we can trust them," Cally contributed. She knew that Avon must have some plan in mind. Certainly, the alias he had chosen for her was no surprise; she had used it before. 

Avon make a show of thinking about it, then obviously came to a decision. "Very well. My name is Chevron. My friends and I were on board a spaceship-" 

"You're Guildcrew!" It was an accusation. 

"I don't know what you mean by that. We were passengers, prisoners, I thought - and they wouldn't even tell us where we were going. In fact, we weren't even sure where we were, then. We'd been travelling from Earth to Bellema when the ship on which we were passengers was grabbed by some sort of matter transmitter." 

"The Scoop. So you ended up at Scitech Central?" 

"There must have been some mistake. They took all the trouble to bring us here then they didn't appear to want us. Why should they? Mind you, it would have been odd if anyone with that sort of technology would have been interested in a trio of entertainers." 

"Entertainers?" 

"Yes. Well, they told us that they couldn't send us home and then they handed us over to the crew of a spaceship. That was attacked by someone. We stole an escape rocket. I'm not sure how we got down alive but, as we did, we felt that we couldn't trust anyone." 

"You were wise. The Guild would probably have sold you as slaves." 

"What about the icecat?" the woman demanded. 

"That? It was on the spaceship. Lenore made friends with it and wouldn't leave it behind." 

"I still can't believe it. No-one's ever tamed an icecat." The man shook his head, then smiled at Avon. "My name's Nelse Riordan. This is my wife, Pala. What else do you do, besides tame icecats?" 

Avon shrugged. "Does it matter?" 

"It might." 

"Shel Vistran." Avon nodded towards Vila. "He's an illusionist. He's good, too, even if I say so..." 

"And he builds my gear," Vila broke in. He had realised where Avon's words were leading and was determined to spread both work and responsibility. He'd had enough of Avon's 'suggestions' at Scitech Central. "And he and Lenore do a mentalist act," he added triumphantly. 

"Used to," Avon corrected, glaring at Vila. 

"Pretend to read minds and all that," Vila went on cheerfully. "Number tricks, that sort of thing." He gave Avon a charming smile, malice behind it. 

Avon, who had intended to claim that he was Vila's manager, conceded defeat. He returned the thief's smile threateningly. 

Unconscious of the by-play, Riordan and Pala were staring at each other with identical stunned expressions. 

"I don't believe it!" Riordan exclaimed. Then, "Prove you're what you say you are." 

Avon raised an eyebrow, then said, "Shel..." 

_I might have known,_ Vila thought. _Didn't take long for him to get his own back... and now I have to save his bacon again._

He sidled forwards. "Watch carefully. Nothing in this hand. Nothing in this hand... Are you watching closely?" his hands twisted and snaked up to Riordan's face. "But what have we here?" 

With great ceremony he produced a coin – a Federation half-credit – from Riordan's ear, then a piece of crystal picked up on Terminal – from Pala's hair.

"Of course, I can do better with real props," he explained apologetically. 

"Not to mention better circumstances." said Pala, with a brilliant smile in his direction. "Welcome, brother." She jumped forwards and hugged him which, owing to the state of her clothing, which was torn almost to shreds, severely embarrassed him. 

Riordan took first Avon's, then Cally's hands in what was plainly a ritual clasp. "Welcome, brother, sister. You know, I still can't believe it. All I can think of is that you came to our aid out of pure instinct. There's so much to explain," he added, laughing at their puzzlement. "You see, we're entertainers too. Showmen, we call it. We're a brotherhood, a family, helping each other against the rest of humanity. Thugs like those who attacked us tonight. Your rescue was not only good luck for us, it was good luck for you. Once you're with my troupe, among your own kind, no-one will question you." 

"Good," said Avon. "We appear to have made enemies."

"All Independents have enemies," Riordan replied grimly. "Meanwhile, we've got to get out of this mess. If any of the locals find us, we're dead men. The robbers you killed will be regarded as honest citizens by everyone on this planet except us. It's no crime to steal our money."

"Then we'd better see if we can repair your hovercar," Avon suggested. 

"Know anything about engines?"

"I build Shel's equipment, don't I?" As they started towards the grounded vehicle, he added, "If this place is so dangerous for us, why were you travelling alone and at night?" 

"I won't try it again. I took a chance, Chevron. We were playing a small town on the other side of the mountains. The entire troupe started back but the AG generator on my sled broke down in the pass through the mountains. Evening was drawing in, so I ordered the others to go on. No sense in all of us risking our necks."

Avon was peering at the hole torn in the hovercar's hull and the engine behind it. "Not too bad. This wasn't a large explosion."

"Uhuh. Distress flare. Their government doesn't trust them with anything stronger. There've been four revolutions here in the past ten years."

"Well, that's lucky for us," said Avon. "This shouldn't take long. Let's get to work."

It was as they were about to climb into the repaired hovercar that Cally drew Avon aside. Even so, she used telepathy. //Avon, how did you guess that Riordan and Pala were entertainers.//

Avon gave a self-satisfied chuckle. "Guess?" His voice could not have carried further than Cally and there was immense amusement in it. "Oh no, I didn't guess. There's an ident tag on the side of the container on the sled. It says, 'Nelse Riordan: Showman and Troupe Master.' It occurred to me that entertainers tend to be clannish and social outsiders, so I took advantage of Vila's odd hobby to join a closed society, one where no-one is likely to look for us."

//I see. Avon, I am not sure if you are a very clever man or a totally unscrupulous one.//

Avon gave her his most beautiful smile. "Both?" he suggested.

Cally punched him lightly on the chest, then slipped past him into the hovercar. Avon was still smiling as he followed her.


	8. Vanishing Trick

The Guild representative had been a diplomat since the day Fleet Admiral Gorsky (who was his uncle, as it happened) had (he said) discerned this particular talent in his nephew. (Those who remarked that Gorsky hated his brother-in-law and his children almost as much as he hated his sister and that this appointment took the whole bunch of them away from the Napoleon were regarded as being overly cynical and disloyal, to boot. Also as rather too intelligent for their own good.) Yet now he was having to struggle to keep his temper with minor planetary officials. 

"We are quite ready to keep our side of the Treaty agreements," he pointed out. "Despite the fact that we have suffered much greater loss than you have, reparations will be made, if you keep to your obligations under the same treaty and return spacecrew to the Guild." 

"Spacecrew? We have no properly registered Guild citizens in our custody on Hinkal, Captain Farranti." 

"We are talking about Del Tarrant and Dayna Mellanby. Do you deny having them?" 

"Hardly. We informed you of their survival while making enquiries about their origins... but they are not Guild spacecrew, Captain. They are not on your citizens' register." 

"Of course they weren't registered, you fools They'd only just come through the Scoop." 

"Then Scitech should have informed us of the fact by now. We will have to check with them." 

This seriously alarmed Captain Farranti, something he made a bad job of concealing. 

The Hinkal official smiled wolfishly. "Produce proof of your claim, Captain." 

"Or you will contact Scitech?" 

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. We are not the ones who are making unsubstantiated claims."

"You are dependent on the Guild," Farranti warned. "We transport your produce, bring you Scitech technology..." 

"And we pay you well for it, in goods without which the Guild could not survive." 

There was nothing new in the posturing. Both men were speaking well-known truisms, words that had passed between the Guild representatives and those of various planetary governments many times previously. 

"We have other sources of materials," Farranti blustered. 

"Really? Remember the Planetary Accord, Guilder? Refuse to trade with any one planet and none of the Cloud Worlds will allow any Guild ship to land. Just remember that, before you threaten us." 

"Oh, this conversation will be remembered. You can be sure of it." 

Both men knew that the Guild would do no more than remember, which gave the Hinkalian official great personal satisfaction. At the same time, he wondered what was so special about these two survivors from _Cloudstalker_ , and also why the Guild wanted to keep their names from Scitech. The prisoners in question would have to be forced to reveal that information. So far they had been recalcitrant, but that would have to charge. "This is all right," said Vila, looking about him with satisfaction. 

 

Lanrir made a chirruping noise from where he was sprawled on the floor, his head on his paws. 

"That seems to signify approval," Avon commented. "I wonder if the animal has a language." 

"Of course he has," Cally said sharply. 

"That has yet to be proved." Avon was the only one of the three of them who had not slept and he was feeling more than usually tetchy. It had been a long and cramped journey to Lomril. Lanrir took up more than his fair share of space. After that, they had spent over an hour being introduced to every single member of Riordan's troupe and had told their story at least half a dozen times. Then they had been fed a very late dinner that had continued long enough to become a very late breakfast. 

Still, he had to agree with Vila that their present quarters were an improvement on rain-soaked ground under a tree. 

Riordan's troupe carried all their gear in big containers on AG sleds and, because of the risk of theft, those containers were mobile strong rooms, the doors under print lock. Vila had sniffed but kept his comments to himself. The containers also held the living quarters of the troupe members. This one was a spare, being previously used for storage, but willing hands had cleared it and furnished it generously. The result was hardly stylish but definitely comfortable. There was a quite large living area, four small bedrooms, one of which Vila had quickly earmarked as a workshop, and a bathroom. Cally had observed that it was designed like a small spaceship, with the services working on similar principles. 

"I'm going to bed," Vila announced. 

Avon rather wanted to go to bed too, but he blocked Vila's path. "No, you're not. Not until we have discussed this 'performance' that we're supposed to give." 

Vila dismissed the matter with an airy wave of his hand. "Don't worry. We're going to have nearly a week to put that together. Riordan told me that he wants us to premiere at the performance that the troupe is giving for the Hinkal President, and we won't be expected to produce anything really spectacular in that short a time." 

"Vila..." 

"Don't worry," Vila repeated, grinning wickedly, "I'll tell you what to do. At last we've found your métier, Avon. I've always needed a stooge." He patted Avon on the cheek and made a very quick exit indeed. 

Avon glared at the closed door as if his stare could bore right through it, then, unable to avoid Cally's eyes, he began to laugh. 

"No-one will look for us here, remember," Cally said. 

"If Tarrant finds out about this I'll never live it down," Avon remarked, but he was still smiling. 

"Do you think that he and Dayna are still alive?" 

"I don't know. It may well be that it is just the three of us that are left now." 

Cally drew close to him and looked up into his face. "Don't blame yourself." 

"What makes you think that I would do anything that useless?" 

"I think you do," Cally said firmly. "You do because you took us to Terminal. Yet, if you did make a mistake, it was only one, and one that Vila or I would have made. Yes, and one Blake would have made too, if the circumstances had been reversed." 

"Servalan out-thought me." 

"As you out-thought her, every time before this. You are entitled to make mistakes, Avon, and you do not make many. This one led to defeat. One defeat. One that does not matter now. That is all." 

"You are very good for my ego, Cally." 

She put her fingers to his lips. "From now on it must be Lenore... and if I am Lenore, you can be Ras, as you were on Ararat." 

"Very well... Lenore." 

"Your ego does not normally need me to feed it, but you are not used to defeat. Once, I might have welcomed seeing you beaten... a little uncertainty would have been good for you, then... but now Vila and I need all the confidence in yourself that that defeat, and Blake's death, has shaken. We need your strength, Avon, your assurance. Most of all, we need your leadership." 

"Thank you." He bent to touch the top of her head with his lips, more moved than he would have believed possible. "Thank you." 

Silently, he added: _You'll have it, Cally. I won't weaken again. We'll come through this, and win the game. Terminal was the last defeat. My word on that._

 

I sat on the low stone wall and stared at the large, heavily fortified building some five hundred metres away. The architect seemed to have known his craft, for the exterior of the building expressed its function perfectly. Squat, dark and cold, it looked sinister even in the bright noonday sunlight. There was an aura about it that disturbed me. 

Jail, security headquarters, military barracks, interrogation Centre: this was the multi-purpose building where Del Tarrant and Dayna Mellanby were being held. Looking at it now, I understood why the Guild was still trying political rather than military tactics to repossess them. I could not use either. There was no way in which I could admit to being here; a Scitech engineer, with no access to interstellar flight, save what the Guild might choose to allow me. I had decided on stealth and this was no time to retreat from that position. 

If only I knew what had happened to Avon and Vila and Cally... but that was a useless wish. The only course of action that was open to me was to free Dayna and Tarrant, hoping that they could give me a lead to the others. 

I stared at the building again. I knew as much about it as the Hinkal Defence Committee, for Orac had given me detailed plans which included the security systems; a stroke of luck, that of the only two computers on the planet modern enough to contain tarial cells, one should contained government records. That other computer complex that Orac could tap worried me, for he had been unable to make sense of the information he was receiving. As it contained nothing of relevance to the search, I had told him to ignore it, though I could not. 

The first problem with that bastard of a building was how to get inside. One thing I had not built into _Moonshadow_ was a teleport system; it would have taken up too much room even if I could have obtained all the parts I needed - the metal aquitar, for example. 

Logic had solved the problem; the only people allowed into the Detention Centre were prisoners and guards. Getting in as a prisoner would be easy, but the difficulties in getting out afterwards made it of no use to me, so I would have to enter as a guard. Orac had found me an almost ideal opportunity: a security guard called Ajit Yaxley, fairly new to Lomril, had just been assigned to a new shift. He even looked a little like me, in that he was tall, heavily built and quite dark. 

Yaxley was now lying on his own bed, trussed up like the proverbial chicken, and I was wearing his uniform and carrying his identity card. Also, the skin on my fingertips was covered by a layer of synthaflesh, on which Yaxley's fingerprints were reproduced. Orac had assured me that these precautions would get me inside that forbidding-looking structure. 

I looked at my watch. The shift change took place in three minutes. Time to make my move. Getting to my feet, I straightened my uniform, then walked briskly towards the building. 

At the gate in the outer wall I inserted my stolen ident and keyed a code into the hand panel beside the slot. Yaxley had, apparently unwillingly, given me a code to go with the ident that, if I had used it, would have brought two dozen guards down upon me. Instead, I used the one supplied by Orac. 

When the gate opened, I stepped inside, retrieved the ident, and descended the short flight of steps to the sunken courtyard which Orac had said was mined. I kept to the marked pathway leading to the building's main entrance. 

Here, my handprint was checked by two large but bored guards who also ran a somewhat inadequate check on my pass. I had thought that this would be the most dangerous moment of the operation for, while my helmet shadowed my face, I was in possession of a visage that was far from being identical to Yaxley's, a copy of which adorned the corner of the pass. I was counting on human nature: that a boring job bores its occupant and that bored people are careless. Besides, these guards had never met the man I was impersonating and it seems a common factor of official pictures from one end of the galaxy to the other that they do not resemble the original in the slightest. From the reaction of the guards here, it seemed to be true from one galaxy to another too. I was waved onwards. 

Out of the five days I had spent on this planet, I had spent almost two memorising every detail of the plans Orac had obtained for me. The detention areas here were all below ground and there were only three ways of reaching them; two elevators and a service shaft. The elevators were closely guarded and Yaxley was not cleared for the detention levels, so I made my way quickly, and hopefully unobserved, to the service shaft. 

Its entrance hatch was locked but Orac had instructed me in the preparation of a computer matrix to open it. I went through it even as it was opening, reached back to retrieve the matrix, and then shut it behind me. 

I found myself standing on a platform no bigger than my two feet, within a narrow shaft that led both upwards and downwards. Handholds and footholds were moulded into the smooth walls, with egress hatches at intervals. I began my climb downwards. There were no null-G devices and my arms and legs soon began to ache as I clambered onwards. Unwillingly, I began to recall our journey down into the depths of Central Control, on Earth, and what had awaited us there. I could only hope that this time the vault would not be empty. 

After what seemed like a galactic year, I reached a hatch marked 'Level BG3'. It was also locked, but Orac's matrix unlocked it. Cautiously, I pushed it open. 

No-one in sight. "Blake's luck," Avon would have said. I opened the hatch fully and stepped out into the corridor. 

"Wha-? Halt!" The shout came from behind me. 

I spun away across the corridor, snatching out my gun. An energy bolt missed me even as I returned fire. The uniformed man who had fired it was lifted from his feet, smashed into the wall and dropped to the floor before I reached his side. Quickly, I dragged the body to the hatch and dumped it down the shaft after securing the man's gun and credentials. 

Blake's luck. That was ironic. As soon as this guard was missed, I would be the quarry of all the human hounds in the building. 

What should I do now? For a moment my mind was blank, the carefully memorised plans and security systems eluding me, then it all came rushing back and I knew what I was going to do next. 

In this High Security Area, the walls were blank metal, the doors unmarked, but I did not need signs. I knew where Tarrant and Dayna were being held. 

Two guards appeared but they walked past me without a second glance and were gone before I reached the cell I was looking for. It was unguarded, because it would open only to the handprint of one of the three guard Commanders, something I did not have. So I placed a small mine on the lock and retreated. Twenty seconds later it detonated satisfactorily and as silently as any explosive can be engineered to do. 

Gun at the ready, I kicked the door open. 

Dayna Mellanby stood before me, crouching low, her hands ready to strike. Our eyes met. 

"Van-" 

"Out of there, Dayna, if you want your freedom." 

"I want it," she confirmed, rising from her fighting pose and striding out into the corridor. 

"Take this." I thrust the weapon I had taken from the dead guard into her hands. 

"What about Tarrant?" she asked, as she checked the weapon. 

"He's next. This way." 

"How did you get here?" Dayna asked, as she followed at my heels. 

"I had inside information. What about Avon and the others?" 

"They were going to try and use an escape rocket to get away from _Cloudstalker_ when the pirates attacked. We saw one go, but I don't know if it landed safely." 

"The locals saw it come down, but they haven't found it yet." It had taken me three agonising days to decide to stop waiting for the natives to find a lead and report it to the computer or my wi'h contacts and to act on the one lead that I did have. 

We reached the cell where Tarrant was imprisoned, but the door stood open. "Bloody hell!" 

"What is it?" Dayna asked. 

"This is Tarrant's cell, and, as you can see, he isn't in it." 

"Then they must have him in Interrogation. We've been in and out of that for what seems like months." 

"Six days. Do you know which interrogation room they're using? There are three on this level alone." 

"I don't know what it's called, but I can show you the way." 

"Then let's go." 

This time, Dayna took the lead. I followed her warily. She seemed efficient – probably was efficient if she had been working with Avon – but I had yet to see her in action, though the longer we stayed here, the more likely it became that I would do so. We were bound to be discovered, sooner or later, and it was always possible that Dayna was in the process of losing us rather than finding Tarrant.

 

She halted at a corridor junction, peered around the corner, then drew back. "It's there, but there's a guard right outside." 

"All right. Give me your gun." 

"What?" 

"You're my prisoner, aren't you? Give me your gun." 

She started to protest further, then laughed, her teeth flashing white against brown skin. "Van, I'm beginning to like your style." 

So it was that when we came around that corridor junction, Dayna was walking in front of me with my gun poking into her back. She had her hands behind her, as if held by restrainers, and she was quite obviously unarmed. 

When the guard saw us he raised his gun and snarled, "Halt!" 

We halted. "Reporting with prisoner Mellanby as ordered," I snapped, in good military fashion. 

This disconcerted him. "As ordered? I don't know anything about any such orders." 

I contrived to look astonished. "But you must have... Guard Commander Byrant himself ordered me to bring her here." 

Dayna simply stood with her hands behind her and looked bored. 

"Well, I didn't get confirmation. Another bloody cock-up, I suppose. Give me your authorisation." 

"Here." I held out my stolen pass. As the guard moved to take it, Dayna's knee came up suddenly, jamming hard into his groin. Her hands moved even more quickly. Then the guard was lying quiet on the floor and Dayna was standing looking expectantly at me. 

"Impressive," I said. 

"So I've been told." 

"Get his hand gun and let's try it again." 

My special matrix opened the door. I marched Dayna through into the room beyond, stopped smartly, saluted the surprised-looking trio – two men and a woman – who sat just a few paces away. 

"Reporting with prisoner Mellanby as ordered." 

I did not look directly at Tarrant. He was strapped to a chair at the far side of the room and his face looked grey under the spotlights. Every now and then a spasm of pain would ripple across his face. A female technician sat at a control panel, her gaze flicking from Tarrant to the monitors and back again. 

The first person to recover was the fat man at the centre of the trio in front of me. "Ordered by whom, guard?" 

I blinked at him, trying to look stupid. "By the Guard Commander, sir. Who else could have given me authorisation?" 

This appeared to flummox them. 

"Damn Byrant," the fat man muttered, reaching for the intercom. 

Dayna's hands came from behind her back, carrying the handgun with them. Even as she started her move, I shot the fat man. Dayna killed the man on his right. The woman reached for a gun but my shot and Dayna's whined in unison with hers. She missed. We didn't. 

Dayna swirled to point her gun at the technician. "Don't move," she warned her as I hurried to free Tarrant from the chair. 

"Who're... you?" he asked in a slurred voice, staring at me with such intentness that, for a moment, I almost believed that he had recognised me. 

"I'll explain everything later," I told him. The time for my masquerade to end had arrived, indeed, was long past, but there were hostile ears in the room. "Can you walk?" 

"Of course." 

"Good." I looked at the technician. "You. Take off your clothes." 

Her mouth opened, presumably to scream. Tarrant exploded into action, slamming his fist across her mouth so she fell to the floor with blood streaming down her chin. 

Horrified, I caught his arm and held him away from her. "There's no need for that." 

"You weren't strapped to that thing for hours while she poured fire down every nerve in your body." 

"It was still unnecessary." I held Tarrant for a moment longer, making him realise that he did not have the strength to break free, then dropped his arm abruptly. "Dayna, undress the technician, put on her clothes and tie her up. Tarrant, come with me." I shoved him gently in the direction of the door. 

"Now, wait! I-" 

"Do you want to get out of here alive or not?" 

Dayna had moved to stand over the whimpering technician. "You heard the man. Take off your uniform and you won't be harmed." 

Tarrant decided to follow me. 

Within five minutes, he and Dayna were clad in the local uniform and possessed appropriate passes. The uniforms did not fit very well and there was even less correspondence between their faces and those on the passes than between my own and the one on Yaxley's but we locked the door on three dead people and two living but bound ones, and I led the way back to the elevators. 

These were unguarded at this level. We piled into one and sent it up to the ground floor where we trooped out into the main hall. I used my special matrix and Yaxley's ident to take us through into the vehicle pool where a blank-faced assistant looked up from his pocket vid at the third time of asking. 

"Yeah?" 

"Aircar. Transport model. The tech," I jerked a thumb towards Dayna, "has to pick up some equipment." 

"Okay. Thumbprint this and let's have your ident." Once again these passed machine scrutiny. Yaxley was an official driver, another reason why Orac and I had chosen him. "Okay, pal. Take the one in space A43. It's all yours." 

"Thanks." 

We found the specified aircar, climbed in, and I lifted her up a metre or so from the floor and crept towards the big doors. These were the last and worst obstacle because their operators were required to check the authorisation of every vehicle entering or leaving. That authorisation had to be thumbprint-keyed by one officer and confirmed by the voice print of another. The first was no problem: Orac had rifled the computer to produce an appropriate thumbprint pattern. The voice print, though, could not be produced to order. 

I said: "This is what I want you to do..." 

At the doors I stopped the aircar and left it hovering as I went to the guard post. Its occupants took the authorisation that Orac and I had forged and checked the signature and fingerprints. Behind me, I knew that Tarrant and Dayna had also left the aircar and had gone to the door. The explosives I had given them were manufactured by Scitech for mining operations in the Hoop, antimatter based and not available to the Guild or the Cloud Worlds. 

When I heard the aircar's main propulsors start up again, I turned, quite slowly, to see the aircar backing away across the floor. 

"Hey!" I yelled. "What do you think you're doing?" 

The aircar promptly swerved, scraping along the side of an expensive-looking hovercar with a nerve-rending squeal. 

"Hey!" I started after it, tossing an explanation over my shoulder at the guards. "Excuse me... back in a minute... that young idiot..." 

I ran after the gyrating aircar, yelling and waving my arms. When I reached it, the door opened, and I flung myself inside. 

The flare that followed almost blinded me, even with my eyes shut and my head down, but I could see enough in between the after-images to take control of the aircar and steer it through the hole that had been seared through the doors. 

Once outside, I flung the aircar up into the sky. 

"As I said," came Dayna's low chuckle, "I like your style, Van." 

"There'll be pursuit," Tarrant pointed out. 

"Which is why we're getting out of this thing." I slowed the aircar and came down towards the streets, steering for a flat-roofed building. "When I tell you - jump." 

"Right," said Dayna, shoving the door open so that the wind whirled into the cabin. 

The roof loomed below the aircar's nose. I went down as close to it as I dared, touching the control that opened the driver's door. "Now!" 

Dayna went out of one door, with Tarrant after her. I was a split second slower through the other, the wind sweeping me out almost before I was ready. I rolled as I hit, bruising my shoulder on the hard composite. 

When I picked myself up, Dayna was already on her feet and Tarrant was sitting on the roof, watching the aircar as it rocketed away on automatic pilot. I touched his shoulder and said, "Let's get out of here." 

I led the way down the emergency stairs and into the small apartment I had rented the day before. "I have a change of clothing for all of us and forged ident discs - don't worry, they'll pass the computer checks. Dayna, you'll find your gear in the bedroom." 

"Thanks, Van." Dayna disappeared. 

"Now, just who are you and why are you doing this for us?" Tarrant demanded as he began to strip. 

"He's Van Ricel," Dayna's voice shouted from the bedroom. "From Scitech." 

"Scitech?" 

"Yes. Remember them?" 

"So you're from Scitech. Ricel... you were responsible for bringing us to the Hoop..." 

"Yes. Yes, I was, but-" 

"And now you're rescuing us. Why?" 

I finished fastening my belt and smiled at him. "Would you believe that I didn't want to explain to Avon that I'd left you as prisoners, when I finally find him again. I've enough to explain as it is." I turned to pick up my boots. "You see, I'm-" 

A sharp pain knifed down into my neck, exploded into my skull, bringing blackness with it.

 

"Tarrant!" Dayna exclaimed, bursting through the door. "What was-? What are you doing?" 

Tarrant, half-clad in local baggy trousers, was standing over Ricel, who lay unconscious on the floor. He spoke swiftly, trying to defuse Dayna's obvious anger. "Listen, Dayna, he's from Scitech. We don't want to go back there. We've got to get to the spaceport and find a Guild vessel." 

"Have we? Are you that sure about the Guild, Tarrant?" 

"Do you want to be stuck in this dump for the rest of your life?" Tarrant demanded, reaching for his tunic. 

"No, I want to find Avon, Cally and Vila." 

"If they're still alive the Guild will find them for us. You don't really think I'll abandon them, do you?" 

"No..." 

Tarrant jammed on his boots. "So let's get out of here and back among friends." 

"Wait," Dayna protested. "You can't leave him like this." 

"Why not?" 

"If anyone finds him like this, he'll be in real trouble. We've got to get rid of all the incriminating evidence, even if you're right." 

"We haven't the time, Dayna." 

The woman looked stubborn. "Van saved our lives. We've treated him badly, Tarrant. I'm still not sure that you're right, but I suppose we have to stick together. I'll go with you to the spaceport, but I won't leave until I'm sure that Van is safe here. We both owe him that." 

"All right. All right." Tarrant was ungracious because of his uneasy suspicion that she was right "Help me move him onto the bed. I hope we don't live to regret it." 

 

I woke to the sound of someone banging on the door, though the pounding was hardly louder than that inside my head. As I sat up, agony stabbed through my skull, and I held my head between my hands, willing the pain to stop. 

As the hammering at the door continued, so did the pain, and I came to the conclusion that I would never again turn my back on Del Tarrant. The other conclusion I came to was that I would have to answer the door, since whoever was on the other side was not going to give up making that awful racket until I did. 

Moving very slowly, I swung my feet off the couch on which I had been lying, lurched upright, and staggered over to the door. I still hadn't worked out what had happened, save that Tarrant had hit me, and that neither he nor Dayna had stayed around to explain why. 

It took me some time to free the lock for my fingers seemed twice as large as normal and the world kept going in and out of focus. It happened to be in focus when the door opened to reveal two big and impatient-looking members of the local police force. 

"Ident?" one of them snarled. 

Feeling sick inside, I made a show of searching my pockets, sure that they would be empty. My fingers encountered a smooth, plastic disc. It would be Yaxley's, of course, worse than useless to me, but I would have to play out the farce to the bitter end. I handed it over and tried to gather myself for action. 

As one of the policemen checked the ident on a portable terminal, the other glared at me. "Why didn't you answer the door? We were just about to break in." 

"I was asleep. I've got this bad headache and - what is all this about, anyway?" 

"City-wide house to house search." 

"But who are you searching for?" 

"Never you mind." The policeman pushed past me into the apartment and began a swift and none-too-thorough search. This was the moment at which I should have attempted escape but the wall was too attractive a support. It was the only reason I was still upright. I was sure that the search, however slight its nature, would reveal evidence of my complicity in the Tarrant/Mellanby rescue... uniforms... idents... passes. Yaxley's ident alone would give me away. 

The policeman came back out of the bedroom. "Hey, you really do look ill. Do you want me to call a medic?" 

"This ident checks out," his companion called from the corridor. 

"I will call a medic," the first policeman said, putting his hand under my elbow. 

"No, I'm all right," I told him. 

"Well, if you're sure..." 

"I'm sure..." 

"Guy! Anything in there?" came the call from outside. 

"Only a sick man. I'm sorry to have got you out of bed," he added quietly. 

"That's... all right. Good luck with your search." As the door closed behind him, I sank down to the floor, resting my head on my knees. Nothing. They had found nothing. Which meant ... what? Tarrant and Dayna must have... But then why had they...? 

It didn't make any sense at all.


	9. Sleight of Hand

Avon pushed his way between a chattering group of acrobats and into the backstage area of the Golden Oasis. This special performance was being given in one of Lomril's most exclusive nightspots, which had been taken over for the evening by the planet's President and his guests. Riordan was delighted and his delight extended to the facilities available at the Golden Oasis. Avon found the place noisy, cramped, and ill equipped. It was also, at present, far too crowded. He felt very uncomfortable among these brightly and scantily dressed people whose background was so different from his own. Even the clothes he was wearing annoyed him. He might always have had a taste for striking clothing, but, while he knew that the black, sleeveless jacket, black trousers and silver shirt suited him well enough, the heavy scarlet cloak that swirled to his ankles embarrassed him. He was also becoming very nervous about his part in the evening's proceedings, despite the fact that he would require little more than the ability to look inscrutable, a part, Vila had said, that suited his talents perfectly. 

It was with a certain wry humour that Avon admitted to himself that Vila might have a point. He was letting nothing of his feelings show on his face and did not intend to do so until they were back safe in their quarters. Then... Vila had better watch himself. 

Now, though, he returned the excited greetings of the acrobats with a nod and stopped to answer Pala's enquiries as to their comfort and their readiness for the evening's performance. 

"It must be good to be back among your own kind," she was saying. "I can't imagine what it must be like to be ripped away from all this." 

"We've been very lucky," Avon agreed. "Thanks to you and your husband." 

"No need for thanks. The luck's all ours, according to Nelse. He says that your act is quite remarkable." 

Avon smiled dismissively. "Not really. We've had no time to build all the equipment we need. This is simply a taste of what we'll put together when we have the time." Or so Vila kept saying. Avon hoped that he could be trusted. 

Pala touched his arm. "I'll let you join Shel and Lenore. I'm always nervous before a performance too, Ras. Good luck." 

Avon watched her go, uneasy at the fact that she had read his mood so easily, then he took her advice and went to join Vila and Cally. 

The alien woman, wearing little except fronds of glittering green that gave her a minimal decency, was sitting on a low bench with one arm around Lanrir's neck. The icecat looked disgusted, and everyone else was giving him a wide berth. 

Vila, wearing a costume that was the reverse of Avon's in that his suit was scarlet, his shirt gold, and his cloak black and patterned with gold and red stars, was examining his major prop, a seemingly simple platform floating on AG units. It had taken them three days of hard work to create it. 

"I always wondered how this illusion was performed," Avon commented. 

"Well, now you know," Vila replied tersely. "Let's hope it works more smoothly than it did at rehearsal." 

Avon shook his head. "Maybe we ought to find some excuse and call off the performance." 

"Too suspicious," said Vila. "We've got to do it sometime. If we don't, where will we go?" Having settled in with the troupe at once, he was now quite determined to stay. "Just because you've had to take a back seat-" 

"Vila..." 

"Avon, we've had this argument several times already. Illusions have been a hobby of mine since before I stole my first lockpick. I've never had the opportunity or the money to perform the big illusions before, but I made it my business to find out how they were done, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not." 

"I am not questioning your expertise." 

"I hope not. You'd also better stop questioning the fact that I know how to hold an audience. Be logical, Avon. Keep to the script and everything will be all right." 

Avon glowered at him, knowing that there was nothing he could do about the fact that Vila was laughing at him, either. "It had better be," he threatened, and moved over to Cally. 

Vila grinned after him. Giving Avon orders and having them obeyed was a new and rewarding experience. It would be nice to be able to make it a habit but he wasn't stupid enough to think that it would last. 

Riordan came striding towards them, resplendent in white and gold. "You're on in ten minutes. Good luck." 

"Thanks," said Vila. "Just don't expect - what is going on?" 

"What-?" Riordan followed Vila's stare and his face flushed with anger as he saw the uniformed policemen pushing their way through the suddenly-alarmed backstage crowd. He stormed towards the nearest, pushing his own people aside as he did so. "What do you think you're doing?" 

"You the boss of this madhouse?" the policeman enquired. 

Riordan moved closer. Avon thought that he was going to hit the policeman and wondered at the depths of the man's foolishness. 

"Yes. I'm in charge here. What about it? I trust you know exactly who is in the audience tonight?" 

"Yeah - and our orders come from him. We're looking for two escaped criminals and the man who organised the prison break. I know you Indes don't carry idents, but I want to know if you've seen any strangers." 

"We haven't," said Riordan. Avon approved of the fact that he did not even glance in their direction. 

"Specifically, these two." The policeman drew a folder from his pocket and thrust it at Riordan, who looked at it automatically. 

"I've never seen them." 

"Or another man; tall, strongly built, dark hair and beard, fair skin, dark eyes?" 

"No," Riordan repeated. He turned and tossed the folder to Avon. "Seen these people, Ras?" 

Avon glanced down at the two holoplates. None of the shock of recognition showed on his face as he shook his head, nor his satisfaction that Tarrant and Dayna were alive and free. He also wondered who had rescued them. 

"I've never seen them before," he said. 

"Well, we have orders to search the place." The policeman raised his voice: "Search everywhere." He noticed Vila's platform and moved towards it. "What's this?" 

"Just a-" Avon caught the words in his throat as Lanrir rose to his feet and padded menacingly towards the policeman, who snatched at his gun. Avon caught his wrist: "He's harmless. Lenore, take Lanrir out of here. You can see that Lenore isn't the woman you're looking for, I trust." 

"Yeah. Not much doubt about that." The policeman ran his eyes up and down Cally with every indication of lustful appreciation. Avon was surprised by the strength of his urge to hit him. Cally looked coldly back, said, "Come, Lanrir," and led the icecat away. 

"Now," Avon went on, "as you can see, this platform is merely a prop used in our act..." 

 

Dayna sat on the sodden wooden steps, her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists. "Any more brilliant ideas?" she asked Tarrant, who was keeping a watch at the end of the alleyway. 

"How was I to know that our pictures were going to be broadcast on every vid channel - and we had to eat, didn't we?" 

"I can't help thinking that Van had anticipated all this." 

Tarrant twisted round to glare at her. "Don't keep on about that. It's not my fault. Have you got the map?" 

"Yes, though I can't imagine what good it will do us now." 

"Just find out where we are." 

The light of the viewer cast a small glow in the darkness, gleaming off Dayna's skin as she consulted the city map . "We're about a kilometre from where we were imprisoned, It may be a cliché, but we really have been going round in circles." 

Tarrant came back to join her. "Let me look. Hmmm... we appear to be in the middle of the admin and commercial districts. They won't be looking for us here. If we make our way into this area, around the presidential palace, they're even less likely to find us." 

"Risky." Dayna's smile brightened the darkness. "Let's go." 

Tarrant grinned in reply, suddenly feeling much better. Their luck was holding. They would win through, just as they had always done. He led the way across the street. The citizens who had chased them from the eating house had vanished. Indeed, there were few people on the streets at all, allowing Tarrant and Dayna to walk more confidently, though Tarrant did have an uneasy thought about curfews. If there was one, it was all that was needed to make their day complete... that, or Ricel finding them again. 

"There they are!" The shout came from behind them. Dayna and Tarrant glanced back, then at one another in dismay: their pursuers numbered a round dozen and included two men in uniform. They took to their heels, plunging down the road and round the corner into another alley, which unfortunately ended in a high wall. 

"Up!" Tarrant gasped. 

Dayna swarmed up his bent back and leaped lithely to the top of the wall. Straddling it, she turned her attention back to Tarrant, grabbing a handful of tunic to haul him up as he leaped after her. 

There was an ominous ripping sound, but the tough fabric held long enough for Dayna to help Tarrant onto the wall. 

"Roof," she said. 

"Right." 

Rising carefully to her feet, Dayna ran along the top of the wall and vanished like a phantom into the night. Urged on by the shouts from below, Tarrant cautiously rose to balance on all fours, then edged along the wall. When a stone whistled past him, his hands left the top of the wall and he fled after Dayna onto a low roof, then up a sloping one. 

Behind them, curses followed the stones. Someone loosed off a shot in the wrong direction and Tarrant followed the light-footed dark shadow through the mountainous geometric world of the rooftops. 

 

The audience was deeply expectant as the lamps dimmed about them, leaving only the circular stage below plashed with light, bright and golden in the centre of the glittering assembly. 

Riordan, the Troupe Master, stood in that light, announcing his new act: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Senators, Officers, Mr President; do not be alarmed by anything that follows. You will be thrilled. You will be amazed. You will be baffled and astounded... but always remember, we are Showmen and we are here to entertain you. 

"Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen... we present, The Masters of Illusion." 

"Strange, isn't it?" the Hinkal President commented to his unwilling Guild guests. "We live in a modern, highly-technical society, yet we still marvel at the skills that thrilled our ancestors millennia ago in another galaxy: dancing, acrobatics, singing, illusionists..." 

Farranti grunted. 

Had he but known it, the President was as tense as he was, but much more skilled at concealing his worry. Who the Devil had rescued Tarrant and Mellanby? Whoever he was, he knew far too much about Hinkal's internal security. And where had the three of them gone? Could the police and other security forces find them? If so, when? Confound it, no outsider could have known so much about the Security Headquarters. Yet someone had. Could it be the Guild? Well, if it was, Farranti was concealing it well. His own refusal to talk about handing back the erstwhile captives had plainly annoyed the Guild envoy. 

A man in a black cloak starred with red and gold appeared at the top of the steps at the rear of the stage, He raised his arms for a moment, pausing in greeting, then almost ran down onto the stage. Despite his flamboyant dress and theatrical manner, he was not immediately imposing. The attention of the audience began to wander and by no means all the eyes in the auditorium were turned in his direction as he came out into the semicircle of richly-dressed people. 

Matters did not stay that way for long, The tricks he performed were ancient but baffling. He worked with nothing more than a pack of cards, coloured balls, five metal rings, and what he could cadge from a more and more receptive audience, but he did everything at breakneck speed and with amusing and self-deprecating patter. Slowly, the bouts of applause grew louder and louder. 

Finally, when he materialised a shimmering bauble in the air, then burst it with a long needle to reveal a cloud of fresh flowers, one of which he ceremoniously presented to the President's wife, the room erupted in pleasure and admiration. 

Vila took his bows, his face flushed, high on the approbation. Then he turned and gave a commanding gesture. The AG platform floated into view, descending until it hovered half a metre above the stage. 

"Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen," Vila announced, "from another dimension, I bring you Chevron, the man who can see through walls." He flung up his hands. Flames billowed from the base of the platform, masking it in red fire. When they died away, Avon was standing on the platform, his arms folded. He scowled impressively at Vila. 

_Don't foul it up, Avon,_ Vila thought. 

Avon stepped down to face Vila, surveying the audience in a lordly fashion. "I will need assistance," he told him. 

"Hmmm." Vila made a great show of walking around the AG platform, so that everyone could see that there was nothing behind or under it. "I could assist you." 

Avon gave him one of his do-not-be-ridiculous-Vila looks. "You mean that you have no-one suitable to assist me." 

For answer, Vila again gestured with his hands. This time, the flames were green and, when they died, Cally stood on the platform. Vila offered her his hand and assisted her down amid thunderous applause. 

"Now," said Vila, "you all must see that there is no trickery." 

The stage began to fill with equipment and volunteers from the audience, while Avon and Cally looked on. Body scanners showed that all three of the Masters of Illusion were wearing nothing but their clothes and that there were no devices buried in their flesh. Then Avon took up position, seated behind a curving screen of thick steel. The audience could see him, but they could also see that the screens were solid, and that Avon could see nothing of the stage. Neither could he hear anything, for the technicians erected a one-way null-field about him and, after members of the audience had been invited to test it, still others were invited to blindfold Avon. 

By now the audience were getting into the spirit of the proceedings and a woman contributed her scarf for use as a blindfold. 

Vila was in his element. Leaving two members of the audience standing beside Avon, he went back to the front of the stage. His amplified voice boomed about the hall. "Can you hear me? Will the listeners please say if they can hear me?" He cupped a hand to his ear and the audience howled with laughter at the obvious indifference of the witnesses. 

Vila waited until the laughter died away before he spoke again. "I'm going to ask for your help once more. I want volunteers to come down to the stage, one at a time, and give an object to Lenore. She will show it to you all, but plainly Chevron will not be able to see it. The observers standing beside him are your witnesses and, believe me, they're quite as anxious to catch him out as you are. Chevron will see through the steel and describe each object to you, in detail. Who is going to be first? You, sir? Come down and hand your object to Lenore." 

Avon, standing behind the sense depriving null-field, was feeling a growing anger. They were cheating. He would take the applause for Cally's natural ability. Yet, once Vila had discovered that there were no natural telepaths in the Cloud Worlds, he had refused to give up this idea and Cally, surprisingly, had backed him up. 

//Avon, I am holding a ring. It is made from iridium and has ten sides. Each facet has a central jewel, an indigo garat.// 

Avon repeated these facts to the audience, pretending to concentrate. 

As the act went on, the bafflement of the audience grew. The observers changed, sceptics coming forward eagerly and leaving shaking their heads. 

Vila concentrated on drawing attention away from Cally. Let them try to determine some link between Avon and himself, discern a code in his words. That was going to be particularly difficult when sometimes he didn't speak at all. 

He produced his pack of cards and a woman chose one, seemingly at random. Vila couldn't see the card, Cally couldn't see the card, indeed, only the woman could see it, but Avon identified it without any trouble. Well, he'd been told what he had to say at this point in the act, of course, the success of the trick depending on Vila's manipulation of the cards. 

When, finally, the force field was switched off and the barriers removed, and Avon whipped off the scarf from his eyes, the applause was deafening, but it only just drowned the hubbub of comment. 

Even Captain Farranti condescended to be impressed. 

No-one was prepared for the finale. As Cally returned the scarf to its owner, Avon took his last bow and stepped on the floating platform. Vila waved his hands and the scarlet flames rose, suddenly changing colour, from red to blue to white, with Vila apparently trying frantically to stop them. Clouds of smoke belched across the stage, and out through it leaped Lanrir.

For most of the audience, Riordan's earlier warning had been unheeded and was now forgotten. There were gasps and screams. Only the in-built assurance of any audience that no-one was going to put them in any danger when they had paid good money to be entertained kept them in their seats. 

Vila, though, gave a yell of fright and began to run. he raced right around the stage, Lanrir bounding after him. Vila was only just ahead of the icecat when he came face to face with the platform from which it had appeared, and from which both Avon and the smoke had vanished. Vila leaped up onto it and down the other side, Lanrir flattened himself to skid beneath it. 

Whirling, Vila produced a bunch of flowers from nowhere and flung them at the icecat. 

The mood of the audience changed in an instant and they began to laugh. 

Lanrir snarled, flinging his head back and showing all his teeth; he crouched low, then sprang at Vila. Cally stepped between them, holding up her hands palms outwards, facing the icecat. Instantly, Lanrir changed direction in mid-spring, hit the floor like a drifting snowflake and rolled over onto his back, his paws in the air. Cally knelt beside him, putting her head between the huge paws. Lanrir batted at her playfully, then stood up, towering over Cally. She jumped to her feet, then up onto his back, and he loped around the full circle of the stage, with Cally waving to the audience. Finally, he leaped back onto the platform, where Vila stood waiting. As Cally slipped from the icecat's back, Vila took her hand and they bowed to the audience. 

The lights dimmed. The room was in total darkness, except for the flames which flared up to surround Vila, Cally and Lanrir. When they exploded into nothingness, all light vanished. 

A few seconds later the main lights illuminated a stage empty except for a simple AG platform which rose high into the air and floated away. 

Off stage, Riordan had to yell to make himself heard over the shouts of appreciation, applause and stamping of feet coming from the audience at the front of the house. "Wonderful!" He slammed his hand down hard on Vila's back. "I've never seen the 'disappearing person' act better presented. That's as old as 'magic', of course, but how the hell do you do that 'seeing through steel' trick?" 

Vila smiled and shook his head. 

"Yes, I know, professional secrets," Riordan said ruefully. "Oh, well. It was worth the question." The Troupe Master smiled at his own naïveté, and headed out onto the stage to introduce his next act. 

 

Tarrant and Dayna lay stretched out on the cold, slippery roof, far too out of breath to feel uncomfortable. Draping their arms over the ridge of the roof, they listened to their own breathing, rasping through the gentle tapping of the rain. 

"I think... we lost them." 

Dayna raised her head slowly and rotated it, scanning the roofscape. "I'm... not... sure. What's that?" 

Tarrant pulled himself up the slope of the roof. "Uh?" 

"That!" 

"Wow..." said Tarrant, inadequately. The sky on their left was the backdrop for a picture built of light, three dimensional and blindingly bright. Silver, treelike structures nodded around a shimmering waterfall and through them glided gilded figures, suggestive of human forms. "You know, Dayna, I haven't seen a display like that since... well, never mind. It must be some sort of entertainment centre... theatre, night club, whatever." 

"Good," Dayna began to sidle along, the roof, hand crossing hand along the ridge. "Let's go there." 

"Why?" 

"Because if the patrons get half as drunk as Vila would, they may be a little careless with their vehicles. If we can get down to the parking area we might be able to find transport to the spaceport." 

"Good thinking." 

Dayna led Tarrant along a hair-raising path that finally ended in a horrible three metre jump onto the roof of the nightclub. 

"Next time," he panted, "we'll not bother with the scenic route. What do you think I am - a cliffbat?" 

"You're here, aren't you? Stop sounding like Vila and help me look for a way in." 

"Suppose there isn't one?" 

"Someone has to get up here to maintain the plant for the display." Dayna poked her hand through a swaying tree trunk, pleased by the effect of the silver light on her skin. "If they can get up, we can get down." 

This display of logic silenced Tarrant. He joined Dayna in her task of searching the roof. 

When they did find the door it had a magnolock on it, which Tarrant promptly blasted, 

"The noise!" Dayna hissed in alarm. 

"Over that?" Tarrant jerked a thumb at the shattered entrance through which raucous music was issuing. He braved damage to his eardrums by leading the way through the door and down the steps beyond. 

Dayna followed him, reflecting that he could not have known how much noise there was going to be before he blasted the door. She longed for Avon's or Cally's comforting presence, their cautious and inventive methods. She understood her own reckless nature and the danger in this teaming with a man who was even more impetuous. 

Tarrant found a light control at the bottom of the steps and the sudden illumination revealed a bare and battered corridor. 

"Where now?" 

"Let's find that parking area. With our luck, it'll be in the basement."

 

"And this is Ras Chevron." 

"I'm glad to see that you aren't really from another dimension," said the President, smiling unctuously. 

"Artistic licence, sir," returned Avon, with a slight bow. 

"I'll have to make sure that our state secrets are well guarded while you're on our planet. Nothing will be safe from a man who can see through walls." 

Avon gritted his teeth. He hated being condescended to but, remembering his vulnerable position, he forced a smile. "I'm sure you realise that there is no need for that. You've probably seen right through me." 

Amid the laughter, the President said, "Indeed, I did not. I found your skills just as baffling as everyone else." 

"It's all a trick, of course," Farranti sneered. 

Avon beamed at him. "So it is. Which I'm sure you'll explain to the President, Captain." 

There was a pained silence. The President was smothering laughter. One or two of his entourage were not as successful as he was in their efforts to keep a straight face, while the Guild Captain was slowly ripening in colour, his mouth sagging. 

With a look of warning in Avon's direction, Riordan stepped into the hiatus in the conversation. "And this is Lenore..." 

"Damned Inde," Farranti muttered, his face now the same shade of magenta as his dress uniform, but the President was too plainly pleased for him to say more, particularly pleased to meet Cally, whose hand he was holding for an indecently long time. 

Avon firmly took himself away from that particular annoyance and looked around for Vila. He quickly spotted him burying his nose in a glass, along with most of the troupe. This unexpected invitation to join the President's party had brought them face to face with more alcohol than they could reasonably be expected to resist, and they had plainly reached the joint decision to drink the Golden Oasis dry. This ambition worried Avon, Vila being an overly friendly and talkative drunk. He still shuddered at the memory of the thief's performance at the Big Wheel in Freedom City. That wasn't going to happen again if he could help it. It was a pity that they could not have avoided this party altogether, but he had been unable to think of a reasonable excuse, especially as the Independents continued to survive on the goodwill of all the other inhabitants of the Clouds which sometimes thinned to void. Their absence would have provoked suspicion, though not half as much as Vila would provoke if he were allowed to talk. 

A policeman, a high ranking one if the uniform's complexity was anything to go by though he looked somewhat ill at ease, appeared at the President's side. A moment later, they moved aside to talk. Avon distinguished real fury on the politician's face and took it as a sign of hope that Dayna and Tarrant were still free. 

Farranti was also watching the proceedings and, as the President rejoined the party, he could not resist asking, "Something wrong?" 

"A minor matter." 

Avon drifted closer, keeping his back to them but listening intently to the conversation. 

"A minor matter," Farranti sneered. "You can deal with that here and now, but not with me over the Guild citizens you hold as prisoners." 

"Guild citizens? Prove that, Captain, and I will deal with you, though this is hardly the time or the place. Why don't you enjoy the party? You can't find yourself in such civilized company very often. Please make the most of it." 

"Call yourselves civilized when you invite those damn Inde showmen in here?" 

"Yet they make an interesting study, don't they? And that woman, Lenore, is very beautiful..." 

At that moment, another voice within the chattering stream of conversation caught Avon's attention. "An' me an' this friend of mine, oh ages ago, we went to this casino... place you're not likely to have heard of..." 

Avon ploughed through the crowd at speed, swept up Vila, made swift apologies involving feeding Lanrir and packing their gear, located Cally and propelled him towards her. 

Vila was finally articulating a protest: "What - Av-... Chevron...?" 

"Shut up. You're talking too much and the President likes the way Cally looks too much," Avon snarled in his ear. "We're getting out of here. When we reach Cally, pretend to be ill." 

"But-" 

Avon's grip on Vila tightened so much that it not only hurt, it was a threat of the violence that might follow. Vila yelped. Avon shoved him forwards, then caught him as if he had been falling and hauled him upright again. Cally pushed her glass at Pala and hurried to join her friends. 

"What's the matter?" //Avon, is Vila hurt?// 

"Shel has had a little too much to drink," Avon told her. "You'd better come with us, Lenore." 

"Of course." Cally put a sympathetic arm about Vila, then noticed Avon's almost-brutal grip. Her head came up sharply and her eyes met Avon's. His carried a warning. Cally decided to heed it, for the moment, and accompanied the silently-cursing Vila to the door.

 

"There," said Tarrant, "I told you we could find it." 

Dayna did not reply. She was tired and her nerves were worn raw after dodging around the Oasis for over an hour, trying to avoid being seen by staff who might realise that they were strangers and the happily drunken and drug-befogged guests, who seemed to think that everyone should join their party. It hadn't seemed to affect Tarrant, but Dayna was jumping at shadows. 

Now, she peered round his shoulder. They had come out at the rear of the building. To one side of the roofed area, a large number of big containers on AG sleds had been parked and stacked into a kind of mini-village, but most of the parking area was occupied by some very expensive-looking vehicles. Tarrant saw with surprise that three of these were guarded. 

"What now?" Dayna asked. 

"We'll get around the back. Look, see that grey hovercar, the one with the driver sleeping in the front seat?" 

"Why that one? Whoever owns that hovercar must be either very rich or very important to rate something that glitzy and a uniformed driver. Both'll be missed." 

"It's the one vehicle we can be sure of entering and starting. By the time anyone notices it's gone, we should be at the spaceport. Follow me." 

Keeping close to the wall, they slipped between the rows of containers on their AG sleds. Some of these seemed to be living quarters of a kind, but there was no sign of their inhabitants. 

The angry yowl of some wild animal sent them both ducking into cover. In one of the containers, a child began to cry. 

Dayna stopped dead. "What's that?"

"Sounds like a baby to me," Tarrant said. 

"Not that, you idiot! The other thing." 

"I don't know. It must be in one of these transport containers." 

"Well, let's hope it stays in there, whatever it is." 

They proceeded out among the hovercars, bent double and keeping their heads down, until they reached their target. Raising himself up on the back of the hovercar, Tarrant peered through the transparent cover that protected the seats. To his delight, he found the driver was fast asleep with his mouth open. Next, he checked the door lock, grimaced, and shook his head at Dayna, who came to join him. 

With Tarrant crouching on one knee, out of sight towards the hovercar's rear, Dayna unfastened the top of her tunic, then knocked hard on the cover. The driver didn't move. Dayna knocked harder. 

The driver started awake, his eyes flying open to be confronted by Dayna's softly smiling face. She moved a little closer to the window, pressing her breasts against them and giving him a look in which the invitation was quite plain. 

With regret, the driver shook his head. 

Dayna pouted, then smiled again and ran a hand caressingly over the curve of the transparent cover, as she might have run it over the skin of a lover. 

This was too much for the mesmerised driver, who straightened and opened the door. As it folded away, he reached out a hand for Dayna. She grabbed it and jerked with all her strength, pulling the driver out of his seat. His outraged howl was silenced as Tarrant pounced on him from behind. 

For perhaps thirty seconds, Tarrant and Dayna knelt beside the unconscious driver, waiting for the alarms or running footsteps that would mean that the guards had heard them, but the only noise remained the faint sound of music and laughter from inside the building. Breathing again, they got into the hovercar, Tarrant taking the driver's seat. 

"Can you drive one of these things?" Dayna asked, as she refastened her tunic. 

Tarrant gave her a look of contempt, then brought the engine to life.

 

Once they were out of the Golden Oasis and into the area where the containers had been parked, Avon let Vila go. The thief jumped away from him, almost losing his balance as the cooler air had the usual effect on his alcohol-bemused brain. He managed to stop himself falling by catching hold of Cally, then opened his mouth to tell Avon exactly what he thought of him, only to be interrupted by an angry voice from behind them. 

"Turn around, Inde scum." 

Avon did not need Cally's //Avon, be careful,// to recognise the menace in the words. He kept his hands well away from his sides as he obeyed. 

Farranti was standing about a metre away, holding a small gun which he must have concealed earlier in the evening. His face was flushed and furious, and Avon suspected that he was somewhat the worse for drink. 

"Try and make a fool out of me, would you, you Inde bastard?" 

Avon said: "I did not 'try' to make a fool of you. That would have been quite superfluous," and was suddenly aware of the fear and reproof on Cally's face. 

"Shut up! You'll see... what we're going to do, Chevron, is to find out if you can see through walls when you haven't got eyes anymore..." 

That was the moment when Avon realised that he really was in deadly peril, and that Cally was also in the line of fire. Vila, standing more to one side, had begun to edge away, into the shadows. 

Avon spoke quickly to distract Farranti's attention, "Do you really think you can get away with that? In plain view of the guards over there?" 

"Who cares what happens to an Inde?" 

Avon smiled. "Perhaps someone who dislikes the Guild even more than he dislikes Independents? The President of Hinkal, for exam-" 

"You! Come back here." When the gun had swung towards Vila, Avon knew that his ploy had failed. It had been a desperate one at best depending, as it did, on the hope that Vila would act with both sense and courage, for once. 

Behind him, Avon heard the soft hum of a hovercar's engines and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a big grey vehicle move slowly onto the brightly-lit exit ramp. There was something familiar about the driver... then he saw the dark profile on the woman in the rear passenger seat and knew why. Desperately, he looked to Cally, who had her back to the ramp, and tried to signal to her with his eyes. If she saw Tarrant and Dayna, she could call to them for aid. _Look round, Cally,_ he told her silently, but she was watching Farranti, waiting for an opportunity to explode into action. 

Suddenly, a black hovercar burst out of the night and onto the exit ramp. Tarrant swung his vehicle in a desperate attempt to get out of its way, sideswiping a parked hovercar which cannoned into the next vehicle with a noise like an avalanche. 

Every eye in the parking area had turned towards the ramp; every eye except those belonging to Cally. In the instant of Farranti's distraction, she kicked the gun from his hand. He reeled away, clutching his wrist, as Cally snatched up the weapon. 

"Don't move!" she ordered. 

So it was that she did not see what was happening on the exit ramp. Avon and Vila, running towards Tarrant's stalled vehicle, saw the intruding black hovercar swirl to a halt, blocking the ramp. Four men piled out of it and also ran back towards the wreck, reaching it well before Avon, Vila, or the oncoming guards.

Meanwhile, Tarrant had forced opened the door of the hovercar and somersaulted out. However, before he had time to get to his feet he was hauled to them by two large men and dragged into a run. He could hear more footsteps behind him and Dayna's protests. 

A large vehicle, also black, appeared at the head of the ramp. Tarrant saw the open side door only as a lighted circle into which he was pushed. Something landed on top of him, crushing him to the floor, then his stomach lurched as the vehicle took off vertically. 

Avon and Vila, surrounded by a group of assorted policemen and private guards, stood helplessly watching the black aircar vanish into the night sky. 

"What the hell was that all about?" 

A policeman rounded on the offending guard. "Fool! Didn't you recognise them? Those are the two we've all been searching for. There's a huge reward-" 

"Looks like someone claimed it," said Vila. 

"Those weren't our men." The policeman swung round savagely. "Iwan! get on the communicator. I want that aircar tracked down. Move, man." 

"I'm on it." 

"Meanwhile, let's get after it ourselves," one of the guards suggested. 

"How? There's not an atmospheric vehicle of any kind in the place," the policeman snarled. It was then that he noticed a dumbfounded Farranti standing beside Cally, who was concealing her gun behind his back. "The Guilder! Well, he's got some explaining to do."

**Author's Note:**

> The person who dies in Chapter 3 is Servalan.


End file.
